Success! Restoring Windows without using windows

[Howard Schwartz]

In a previous thread I asked what backup/restore programs could backup and
restore windows, in cluding LFNs, without itself using windows.

I found the info zip's programs, zip32.exe and unzip32.zip will create and
extract files with long filenames, if they are in the same directory as
cwsdpmi.exe, the protected mode and 32-bit service for dos, and if the
long filename API is made availabe by loading a tsr like doslfn.

Thus any backup or archive program can create an archive that uses zip
copression using windows. If windows stops working, one can restore
any and all files using the zip utilities, cwsdpmi, and doslfn -- as
described above.

 

[Craig]

In a previous thread I asked what backup/restore programs could backup and
restore windows, in cluding LFNs, without itself using windows.

I found the info zip's programs, zip32.exe and unzip32.zip will create and
extract files with long filenames, if they are in the same directory as
cwsdpmi.exe, the protected mode and 32-bit service for dos, and if the
long filename API is made availabe by loading a tsr like doslfn.

Thus any backup or archive program can create an archive that uses zip
copression using windows. If windows stops working, one can restore
any and all files using the zip utilities, cwsdpmi, and doslfn -- as
described above.

Congratz & thanks for reporting back.

What version of Winderz have you tested this on?

tia,
-Craig

 

[Morten Skarstad]

Howard Schwartz skrev:

In a previous thread I asked what backup/restore programs could backup and
restore windows, in cluding LFNs, without itself using windows.

I found the info zip's programs, zip32.exe and unzip32.zip will create and
extract files with long filenames, if they are in the same directory as
cwsdpmi.exe, the protected mode and 32-bit service for dos, and if the
long filename API is made availabe by loading a tsr like doslfn.

Thus any backup or archive program can create an archive that uses zip
copression using windows. If windows stops working, one can restore
any and all files using the zip utilities, cwsdpmi, and doslfn -- as
described above.

What about NTFS and file permissions?

 

[Howard Schwartz]

What version of Winderz have you tested this on?

windows 98SE

 

[Howard Schwartz]

What about NTFS and file permissions?

I doubt if the infozip utilities speak NTFS, since the OS and application
need to be designed to understand the data formats of the file system they
are writing to. But I have not tried this yet.

 

[Al Klein]

I doubt if the infozip utilities speak NTFS, since the OS and application
need to be designed to understand the data formats of the file system they
are writing to.

Apps don't, Morten. That's why we have operating systems. The app
calls the OS and says "save this stuff to a file named x". The app
has no idea where it's going, or how it's saved and, in some cases, if
the app tries to access the storage medium itself, the OS stops it.
(Try an app that does direct disk access in any version of Windows
newer than 95.)

 

[Terry]

Apps don't, Morten. That's why we have operating systems. The app
calls the OS and says "save this stuff to a file named x". The app
has no idea where it's going, or how it's saved and, in some cases, if
the app tries to access the storage medium itself, the OS stops it.
(Try an app that does direct disk access in any version of Windows
newer than 95.)

The discussion is about saving the file access permissions inside a
zip file so they can be restored later. So in this case, the app
*would* need to understandf NTFS access permissions. Windows NT/2K/XP
provides an extensive ACL (Access Control List) API so applications
can deal with this if they need to do so.

Of course, the infozip zip and unzip programs don't do anything with
access permissions. These utilities are cross-platform, they make no
attempt to deal with such things.

Terry

 

[Al Klein]

The discussion is about saving the file access permissions inside a
zip file so they can be restored later. So in this case, the app
*would* need to understandf NTFS access permissions. Windows NT/2K/XP
provides an extensive ACL (Access Control List) API so applications
can deal with this if they need to do so.

Which has nothing to do with "the OS and application need to be
designed to understand the data formats of the file system they are
writing to".

 

[Morten Skarstad]

Al Klein skrev:

Which has nothing to do with "the OS and application need to be
designed to understand the data formats of the file system they are
writing to".

Uhm, yes it does. If an app can't restore file permissions when
restoring files, it is useless for backup purposes.

 

[Al Klein]

Al Klein skrev:

Uhm, yes it does. If an app can't restore file permissions when
restoring files, it is useless for backup purposes.

An OS needs to understand the data format it writes to. Apps writing
in modern OSs don't write to disk, they give data to the OS to save,
so they don't have to know anything about the format of the medium.
File permissions has nothing to do with the format of the medium.

 

[Chris Lee]

In a previous thread I asked what backup/restore programs could
backup and
restore windows, in cluding LFNs, without itself using windows.

I found the info zip's programs, zip32.exe and unzip32.zip will
create and
extract files with long filenames, if they are in the same directory
as
cwsdpmi.exe, the protected mode and 32-bit service for dos, and if
the
long filename API is made availabe by loading a tsr like doslfn.

Thus any backup or archive program can create an archive that uses
zip
copression using windows. If windows stops working, one can restore
any and all files using the zip utilities, cwsdpmi, and doslfn -- as
described above.

Ummm...Why bother when you can use a bootable linux-based rescue crdom like
RIP and use partimage to make a image file of your Windows drive,burn the
image file to either a cd or dvd and restore using that?