DarkChip Data

InstallingSwissKnife and DriveImage XML BartPE Plug-Ins

Now we will be installing the SwissKnife and DriveImage XML BartPE plugins that were
downloaded at the start of this tutorial. If you have not done this yet, please refer to the
Installing DriveImage XML section. The order of the install of these two plugins is not
important, and neither one is dependent on being installed before the other. The only thing
important is that they are both installed prior to building your BartPE disk.

Installing SwissKnife BartPE Plug-In

We will begin by installing the SwissKnife BartPE plugin. Before I give you the steps on how
to install the SwissKnife BartPE plugin, I wanted to explain why it is needed. By itself,
DriveImage XML will not partition a drive. This is why SwissKnife is used. The role of
SwissKnife is to partition the hard drive prior to restoring the backup image. In order to
restore from a failed system, you normally do one of two things:

1) you replace the original hard drive which held your Drive C: information with a new hard
drive from your local computer store (BestBuy,etc).

2) if the original problem was not a hardware problem, but a software corruption problem,
chances are that your original hard drive still works fine, and simply needs to be restored
back to a known state with the DriveImage XML.

In both cases, it is a good idea to partition the drive. In my tutorial, I will assume you will
partition the entire hard drive to your Drive C:.

A Word of Caution before working with a Disk Partitioning tool

When partitioning a drive, you need to be very aware of the drive you will be partitioning. If
you are not careful, you could end up partitioning the incorrect drive causing complete data
loss. Please be very aware of the drive you will be partitioning. A good habit to get into is
logically "labeling" your hard drives attached to your PC, so that whenever you are using a
disk management tool, it becomes rather easy to recognize which drive you are working
with. Please refer to the Systems Requirements section for details on how to label your
drives.

Once the CD has been inserted,
take a look at the first field on the
PE Builder main menu. Ensure that
you have the correct drive letter in
the Source dialog box. In my case,
the cdrom drive is Drive F:, so I
have that inputted into this dialog
box. If your cdrom drive is different
or your licensed installation files are
located in a directory (ie.
c:\Windows_XP_CD), ensure you
supply the full path to the installation
files in this field.

What you see before you is a list of possible plugins which can be made available to you as programs from
within the BartPE boot disk. The entries with the value of Yes under Enabled are the ones which will be
installed into the BartPE boot disk once you build your BartPE disk. Note that currently, there is no entry for
DriveImage XML. In the next series of steps, we will be adding the DriveImage XML to the list and enabling it
to be added to the BartPE build process when we go to burn our CD. We are going to insert the DriveImage
XML plugin that you downloaded in the Obtaining and Installing DriveImage XM" section. If you have not done
this step yet, I advise you to refer back to the Obtaining and Installing DriveImage XML section and do this right
now. On the Plugins menu, click Add