Infos:
About OpenGates
OpenGates is a small tool written in C that will "open" the hardware
limitation "gates" of Windows installations. All current Windows versions
(up to and including Windows 7) are too stupid to boot after the hardware to
which the root disk is connected to has changed. This happens for example if
you try to boot a raw copy of a Windows installation in a virtual machine like
VirtualBox or VMWare or if you try to use your old Windows installation on a
new PC. You will certainly end up with a BSOD telling you Windows can't access
his boot device (Error code 0x0000007B). It should be possible to solve this
by recovering Windows using the original installation medium but as one does
not always has it, I wrote OpenGates.
What does OpenGates do?
* Patch the registry in order to enable Micro$oft Windows's legacy IDE drivers.
* Blank user account passwords (In case you "forgot" them ;) ).
* Remove drivers that could conflict with the new hardware.
* Determine used HAL (Important when migrating to VirtualBox).
* Copy AntiWPA to disk (You have to activate it manually afterwards!).
* Print out useful infos to configure your VM.
All steps that change data on your disk are optional and you are given the chance to
skip them.
How to use OpenGates?
The easiest way is to integrate OpenGates into a BartPE CD-Rom. Just grab the
BartPE plugin below and read the included README for step-by-step instructions.
Once you built the CD, just boot from it and let OpenGates do his work.
You can also attach your harddisk to another Windows installation and use the win32
package below, but this is far more complicated than booting with a BartPE CD.
Development status
I'm currently working on the following things:
* Porting OpenGates to Linux in order to not need BartPE and a Windows license anymore
Virus alerts
As OpenGates contains AntiWPA, multiple AV scanners complain about the zip file containing
a virus. These are all false positives! Please disable your AV before downloading the file
and see the following analysis on virustotal.com for an overview of false alarms AV software could
output.
In addition to the above, the use of AntiWPA or even the posession of it may be illegal in your country! If in doubt, please consider to not use this feature of OpenGates.
Bugs
Currently none are known but as OpenGates uses highly experimental and undocumented techniques and I can't test them with every possible software combination, you may encounter some.
If so, please take the time to report them to <bugs (at) pinguin (dot) lu>
License:
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Downloads:
Due to Google's crappy Safe Browsing, I had to encrypt the following ZIP files. The password for all 3 files is "V3vfVGszMu9u7LjJ".
Windows binary: opengates-0.2.1-win32.zip (SHA256: 17f2448b7001d6d8365a533593b62419af4001d39cfa98a26af4373923bd5591)
Plugin for BartPE: opengates-0.2.1-bartpe.zip (SHA256: c894ce3b75f395ec48235b1e0671c97f134e6ff0f8d3a781ca71077b59df154f)
Source: opengates-0.2.1-src.zip (SHA256: 1352ba1090ceace3b4a08d05d1fd49a87ea492e836ba9f6ebd7fa75353d95c30)
Docs: Readme, HOWTO-BootableOpenGatesCD.pdf