Tip: New use for Bart's PE

Users of Windows XP may be familiar with Bart's PE, which is a free utility that builds a bootable CDR that can operate as a maintenance OS for stricken XP systems.

Like CDR-booted Linux, a Bart's PE CDR can support USB sticks, but only as long as they are present when the CDR boots up. It won't detect a USB stick inserted mid-session.

A less-obvious use of a Bart's PE CDR is as a means of trasferring material between older versions of Windows with poor native support for USB sticks, and such sticks. For example, let's say you carry around your latest updates and anti-malware tools on a USB stick, but are confronted with a Win98 PC in the field. Either you don't have your USB stick's driver CD-ROM with you, or you don't want to pollute that PC with drivers for a device it will never see again.

So you can insert the USB stick, then boot that PC off Bart's PE CDR. Using that OS's native support for USB sticks, you can do the transfers that way.

Today's links for Win98 / IE 6 users:

http://www.frankprovo.com/win98ie6filesproblem.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=260723

I may have more on the issue referred to in the first link in a day or few!

Today's remembered music albums are a beautifully depressing pair: Lou Reed's "Berlin", which I regard as a singular achievement that puts him up in the firmament even if he did nothing else, and Nico's "The End". Though what we played at tonight's Bridge was an album by The Mediaeval Baebes, as no-one felt like getting depressed :-)