[InfoJunkie4Life]

My knowledge of computers is fairly sufficient. For the last 8 months I have been doing small network installs, computer rebuilds, fresh installs, Linux experiments, pirating (No further details to be given due to the TOC), DVR/CCTV installs, network wiring, virus and clean ups, and a number of other computer oriented tasks. I've been working with computers for somewhere near 8 years.

Anyway, a year or so ago, I came across something called a portable application. I've never heard of these things before, and I did some reading. I was so enthralled I downloaded hundreds of applications and did hours and hours of experimenting and testing. I loved them, took them everywhere on CDR's. It was great. So, I had this great idea. What if I could create a CD that would be the ultimate portable CD. I will make a list of intended features:

At least 100 Applications
No registry Foot Print
No Hard Drive Foot Print
Relatively Fast
50% compatible with all windows OS's 95 and up
Good for System Repairs/Clean ups and for personal privacy anywhere
and a few others I can't remember.

This seemed to be an endless and difficult task. Especially since I was finding more and more every day, and had some trouble with all of my goals. Well, I got busy so it got put on the back burner for a while. Eventually, I saved a few of them to a flash disk I got from a friend, and was using them for clean ups and other work I've been doing.

Recently I've been doing quite a bit of research and have decided to go back at it, and so far with far more progress. I'll tell you what I've got, and what I am hoping for.

Instead of a mere CD, I am using a flash drive. This really helps with the space situation, however I would like to still keep it under two gigabytes. Mostly because of affordability of others. I would like to share this when I am finished, however, I don't want people to be restricted to bigger flash drives that they may not be able to afford.

After installing most of the apps from portableapps.com, I have found that 2GB is hard to obtain. So, I am working on making this possible. My methods are strange, but I believe they will work. All shared dll, exe, and ocx files will be placed in a "System" folder on the drive, rather than having them stored in each folder multiple times. That saves me about 100MB. I am hoping this will not adversely affect the applications' performance. To make it work, I am using a batch file for each program that changes the PATH command. This way when a dll is called and it isn't present it will revert to the System Folder. I am hoping the same will work with Python files and Java Based Files.

This method serves a dual purpose. If it works without any apparent bugs, it will erase the global path variable for the session of the program's opening, using Setlocal and Endlocal. This will prevent any application from calling a dll that resides in the host computer's system directory, preventing timestamps, and other forensic traces from appearing. If it shows a missing dll during any application's running, I will port a copy of that file to the Drive's system Directory.

Secondly, all programs will be stripped of their language settings. If someone would prefer it, they can find the language of their choice online, as all of these files are available for free. Some programs will be dropped to half size due to the amount of languages they support. As far as space goes, I may resort to eliminating programs that overlap purpose, for the best of the two (or however many I have on there).

I hope to make this "forensically" untraceable. So far, besides leaving records of accessing files on the hard disk, I have some other challenges to overcome if I wish to achieve this. Most computers support prefetching, and with the newer OS's, superfetching. Any application I run generally leaves a prefetch piece of data behind. I don't want this. I think that if in the batch file, when I run it, I can use a /prefetch:n command to eliminate this. You may suggest just running a batch or reg file to turn off prefetching for the duration of the drive's placement, but that may leave some traces. I want none, no change to the hard drive what so ever, not even if it is temporary. If the /prefetch parameter doesn't work, I am hoping to find a "Sandbox" like solution that can intercept the prefetch command coming out of the file.

One of my biggest concerns is the paging file. I have no clue how to prevent my program, which will be in memory at the time, from being paged onto the hard drive. I personally have some tools which analyze the paging file and hiberfile.sys for activities that go on the computer. This is a huge problem I am hoping to find a way around. And maybe on release of the flash drive, a memory defrag to get rid of any dll's or other files that may not have been released. I don't want to have to reboot when the disk is pulled.

I also need to be able to suppress any error messages from being logged by Windows, however I think that there is a parameter that can be appended into the batch file for that also. I realized a few weeks ago that there are ID codes hard coded into the flash drive's memory. This is a problem, because it can point out that that drive was used in such and such a computer. Now I don't think that there is any way to stop Windows from storing this information, however, it may be possible to change the numbers on the flash drive. I will include this information with the complete collection of my programs. This way there will be thousands of people out there with flash drives that say the same PID and other info. This may cause problems with the driver, I don't know yet, that is for further experimentation and research.

Just for visual, I am hoping to include an explorer.exe replacement like talisman, and maybe a couple of menu programs. I like talisman because I am able to include system info/programs integrated with programs solely from the flash drive. I may also be able to rig this up with a multiple desktop app.

I am posting this to just kind of get a community reaction. I don't want any moral arguments or what programs to include/exclude. I will send anyone a copy when it is done if they want. But any suggestions as to methods of the problems I posted above or any other suggestions are welcomed. Maybe I will inspire someone. I am no programmer, but I have an uncanny knack for picking up information.

Thank You.

P.S.

Picture this. You pop your thumb drive in nearly any computer in the world. Then, explorer.exe is suspended. The desktop changes to this completely different system with a hundred of the most powerful applications ever coded. Not to mention everything the computer has ever done, is still there. When you're all done, you press a button and pull your drive. Its like you were never there.

[InfoJunkie4Life]

I forgot to mention, I plan on upx'ing the files also.

[InfoJunkie4Life]

Never mind with the PATH command thing. That may be used later for restricting environmental variables. I've decided to format my drive to NTFS, and then use the "fsutil hardlink create" command to downsize my repeated dll's.