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<Soapbox>
I don't mean to talk down to anyone, but at times I feel like we're being greatly outnumbered by those using TinyXP (not legal), BartPE (requires a separate XP license), WinFLP (only legal if you have a VLA with SA - if you don't know what they are, you probably don't have them).
Please, folks, if you need to have XP on your Eee, either be legal about it or wait for the one that ships with it.
Thanks.
</Soapbox>
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hmmm i develope embedded systems and am in the process of putting together a windows embedded Xp for the EEEpc.
much better than faffing around with the cut down hacks and such, but you need the tools to do the job of course
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Hmm......no, I am good. Thanks, though!
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Im not running any windows... yet!
And I hope you fall off your little soapbox... muahahaha
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I get free WinXP license from school bwahaha.
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Chris wrote:
<Soapbox>
I don't mean to talk down to anyone, but at times I feel like we're being greatly outnumbered by those using TinyXP (not legal), BartPE (requires a separate XP license), WinFLP (only legal if you have a VLA with SA - if you don't know what they are, you probably don't have them).
Please, folks, if you need to have XP on your Eee, either be legal about it or wait for the one that ships with it.
Thanks.
</Soapbox>
All Tiny XP or WinFLP does is strip some stuff out. It's easier downloading that, then doing it yourself with NLite. They don't usually supply a code, you have to use your own one. So get off your high horse.
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LoganT wrote:
All Tiny XP or WinFLP does is strip some stuff out. It's easier downloading that, then doing it yourself with NLite. They don't usually supply a code, you have to use your own one. So get off your high horse.
So why not take the five minutes to run nLite and be 100% legal?
For the record, WinFLP is a different variant of XP, vis-a-vis the difference between XP Home and XP Pro, albiet on a more pronounced scale.
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i am still using my legal copy of xp pro, if my knowledge is correct i think you have a few time for the key but over the years i've been rebuild my system once and SEVERAL HD failures that made me reinstalled a few times and whenever i tries to activate it i got a message saying my key has already exceed the number of activation. so i called them made up some **** that i just reinstalled my xp cause of HD failure and got my activation key.
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100% legal here!
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also legal here....I actually own ~20 copies of xp pro and only own 5 computers now.
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TinyXP, BartPE, WinFLP AND N-LITE is legal it's only alternative way to install windows xp to your system.
It just mod windows before install to your system. (eg. remove ie, wmp or configure your system not make a hibernate file)
All of that can do after install windows xp. but do it thisway faster
As long as you used real SN form MS that you get when you buy windows xp. I think it's legal.
Last edited by put4558350 (2007-11-07 3:33:11 pm)
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put4558350 wrote:
TinyXP, BartPE, WinFLP AND N-LITE is legal it's only alternative way to install windows xp to your system.
It just mod windows before install to your system. (eg. remove ie, wmp or configure your system not make a hibernate file)
All of that can do after install windows xp. but do it thisway faster
As long as you used real SN form MS that you get when you buy windows xp. I think it's legal.
Downloading any version of Windows, save for time-limited betas, is illegal. That includes TinyXP, and anyone using WinFLP or WinPE without the license agreement and original CD.
Using one license of Windows XP for multiple systems is also illegal. BartPE and nLite in and of themselves are fine - it's if you take your original XP CD and run multiple copies at the same time (XP on your desktop, and an nLite or BartPE version on the Eee) that it becomes illegal.
A legit serial number is not carte blanche to pirate.
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Legal myself, but not running XP on my eee. 
(hell, I have an unopened Vista Ultimate at home that I doubt I will ever use)
Regarding Bart PE. Actually, its NOT legal. How do I know? Because when I busted it out at Microsoft Labs to build our environment out for testing when i worked for Costco, they told me so. There is also stuff out there on the big bad web that talks about the legality of it. Something to do with dismantling the components. Pretty sure its in the EULA. Regardless, straight from the horses mouth, it ain't legal. If you look on the bart site, there is verbiage about using only a true copy of XP to use it. That covers you for the license portion of it, but it still breaks the EULA.
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That's a can of worms Chris 
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Chris wrote:
put4558350 wrote:
TinyXP, BartPE, WinFLP AND N-LITE is legal it's only alternative way to install windows xp to your system.
It just mod windows before install to your system. (eg. remove ie, wmp or configure your system not make a hibernate file)
All of that can do after install windows xp. but do it thisway faster
As long as you used real SN form MS that you get when you buy windows xp. I think it's legal.Downloading any version of Windows, save for time-limited betas, is illegal. That includes TinyXP, and anyone using WinFLP or WinPE without the license agreement and original CD.
Using one license of Windows XP for multiple systems is also illegal. BartPE and nLite in and of themselves are fine - it's if you take your original XP CD and run multiple copies at the same time (XP on your desktop, and an nLite or BartPE version on the Eee) that it becomes illegal.
A legit serial number is not carte blanche to pirate.
So your claim is that if I purchase a retail copy of Windows XP Professional Original Release, that it is illegal for me to obtain* a CD with a retail copy of Windows XP Professional SP2 and use that to install onto my computer, using the Product Key that came with my purchased retail copy?
*For the purposes of this discussion, obtain means getting one by any means other than buying another copy of Windows XP. Borrowing a CD from a friend, getting an ISO off the net, whatever.
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Well, I'm gonna step into this. smgoller: yes, that is illegal.
Say I have a legal Serial Number. If I download the XP installer off the Internet, EVEN if I am planning to use my 100% legal Serial with it, it's illegal, as I should only obtain XP by buying it. I know it sounds weird, but that's just the way Microsoft plays...
That is one of the reasons why some of us use Linux; I got tired of all the BS you have to deal with using Microsoft software...
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I have 4 retail XP Pro licenses. 3 of them are SP0, and one of them is SP1. By this logic then, I need to ensure that each Product is only installed via the CD that came with it. Also by this logic, nlite is illegal because you're generating a new set of install media that's not created by microsoft and no longer using the media that came with the product key.
Whatever. My head is going to explode if I think about this much more.
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Windows XP Pro Retail: GBP 242.
Maybe people would be less willing to pirate if the software didn't cost as much as the device?
(For the record I'm continuing to run Linux on my Eee PC.)
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I dont see m$ chasing after anyone for having multiple copys of their os provided you have a Legit product key and only have it installed on the amount of systems agreed to with your license etc .. I mean look at the OEM releases of office2007,, OEM source installs the s/w and the end user only get's the License key. Taking into account I.P Duplication technically taking a snapshot of a system could be considered illegal? m$ only really care about the product key, else we would see some form of copy protection embeded into their install cd's.. as for Nlite once again you are duplicating the m$ source to another destination for duplication... which could be considered I.P Duplication.. once again potentially illegal.
I think you should focus on people requiring Legitimate Product Key's in your staement.. or you need to consider removing any Windows duplication processes from these forums?.. which in the xp section would probably be a large number... considering the mod's to install from a usb device etc.. once again you are duplication m$'s I.P... should m$ sue someone using symantec ghost for creating a snapshot... no... of course not.. all they care about is the license and that you dont 'modify' the source... so technically is nlite modifing the source, is the source considered the install cd in it's orignal form or the i386 folder itself?... is it illegal to copy the i386 folder to your root drive for future prevention of requiring the disc.... with bartpe your creating a work-around for not having a winpe license... does bartpe claim you require a seperate license... if so where in the process of using bartpe do you require to enter a license... and how can bartpe be legal to use and distribute if this is the case?
infact while we are at it let's all delete those .mp3's from our systems so we dont all goto riaa hell 
. while were at it shall we touch base on the time-shifting laws..?... probably best to just talk about computer problems and solutions and leave the legal stuff to the professionals
!!!CAN OF WORMS INDEED!!!
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RE; BART PE
Hi, my name is Bart Lagerweij. I've been creating DOS based boot disks and bootable CD-Roms from Dos 3.x (not sure what year) until 2002. I have created the: Corporate Modboot, Network bootdisk, CD-Rom bootdisk, a hardware independent Dos CD-Rom driver eltorito.sys and lots of other tools needed to boot a PC the way I want it to.
As you can read above I've stopped doing that in 2002. Why? I saw a Windows PE (WinPE) bootable CD-Rom (from Microsoft) in action and I got very, very curious. I knew then as I know now, that in time PE-based solutions will be every PC technicians best friend.
Goodbye to all the good and bad dos-based NTFS utilities! Now we can boot from a CD-Rom and have full read/write access to NTFS volumes!
Here are a few things that are possible with PE and are not possible with any type of dos-based boot disk, even when using network support and ntfsdos:
Accessing very large (>2TB) NTFS volumes or accessing volumes that are not seen by the BIOS, like some fibre channel disks.
Very reliable scanning and cleaning of viruses on NTFS volumes using a "clean boot".
Active Directory support.
Have remote control over other machines, using vnc or remote desktop.
While I was already thinking about what great things this could do, I noticed the end-user license agreement for Microsoft software that is included with Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 1.2 (eula.txt). In section "1. ELIGIBILITY." it states the following:
..."You may only install and use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT if you are an active Microsoft Software Assurance Member ("SAM") for the systems product pool or servers product pool, if you currently have license coverage for Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) Upgrades via a Campus Agreement or School Agreement, or if you are a current or former participant in the Windows XP Joint Development Program, Windows XP Rapid Adoption Program, Windows .NET Server Joint Development Program, or Windows .NET Server Rapid Adoption Program. If you do not meet one or more of the requirements listed above, you may not install or use this SOFTWARE PRODUCT and you must terminate the installation of this SOFTWARE PRODUCT immediately"...
Oops, that does not include me. As a matter a fact that does not include most of us! This was very disappointing. But then I started thinking, how difficult can it be to build something similar to Windows PE from a Windows XP installation CD-Rom? A quick file compare looked like most of the needed files are on the Windows XP CD-Rom. Only because I thought building this would be easy, I started coding my own builder program. Had I known how hard it would be, I would probably never have started programming PE Builder.
This first version (v1.0.0) of PE Builder was released on April 28, 2003. Yes, version 1 was a very simple, very static, very bad and copyright violating program. And the (very friendly) people at Microsoft had every right to kick my butt. But I learned from it and in May 2003 I started on a second version. In July (three months later) v2 was ready.
Version 2 did not have the problems that version 1 had. The version 2 build engine had its own registry hive builder which was not easy to program and took about 50% of my research and coding time. It also was dynamic enough that it could build from Windows XP and Server 2003. In v2.0.1 I added a small but very powerful menu program called nu2menu, which was written by my buddy Henk de Jong. The latest 2 version (v2.0.2b) even used a new ISO filesystem called "ISO-9660:1999 (version 2)" instead of the Joliet extensions. Some non-English versions of Windows XP had filenames longer than the maximum allowed length for Joliet filenames (103 chars). I had to patch the ISO building program (mkisofs.exe) so that the Windows NT bootstrap and setup loader would boot properly. The file and directory names can now be up to 207 characters. But again this version had something bad. When comparing some INF files they looked too much like the Windows PE builder from Microsoft.
I had to change the entire INF file layout to use its own format. And on Sep 1, 2003 (almost 6 months after starting) version 3 was ready. After adding plugin support, PE Builder got very popular. People from all over the world are writing their own plugins to add the program they like and use.
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Some more info.
Originally Posted by TheThinker
Because Microsoft's P.R. people seem to not have e-mail addresses (ironic, isn't it?) and that I loath to make non-local calls, I recently e-mailed the people at Nlite to get their feedback on their discussion. Here's their reply:
nLite is for sure much safer to use than downloading TinyXP, that's not
even a question.
Downloading ISO in comparison to editing your own.
I do understand that stretched logic about owning the license, but the
act of stealing (downloading illegally) is the first fact in this
discussion.
Now about the modifications in general. I think that it's ok because
everyone does it, kinda gray area.
But for common sense EULA in that regard is more inhuman than our
editing of the software we bought. Why did they lock us out in the first
--place, where is the custom setup?
Europe already won the Media Player argument, they will have to remove it.
It may however depend on the country you're in.
For example in Europe we don't have to care about the EULA because it
makes no sense, and for some legal reason it's not valid here to the
full extent. But in the US there are two countries if I remember
correctly where EULA counts 100% and could be dangerous.
Essentially nLite is a tool, doesn't contain MS code, that's the
important fact. In itself it's legal, that is proven by 3.5 years of
distribution without a single incident.
nuhi
Nuhi makes a very good point; downloading the ISO for TinyXP is not safe at all considering the fact that you're not even aware of what exactly has been done to XP (that's not to say that XP was originally non-malicious of course). For all I know TinyXP may have malware built into the system, along with rootkits to make it even harder to remove them, which makes for any activity over the internet through TinyXP a potential security nightmare. And since I really do enjoy tailoring an O.S. to meet my specifications, I guess I'll just have to try out software like Nlite for my own modding pleasure . It should be fun.
My verdict is in; it's better to mod than to illegally download/distribute copywrited material. And who here can disagree with that notion, right people?
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and more...
Unfortunately, there’s always the legal side of using nLite, or creating any kind of Windows copy, for that matter. While you should generaly be able to create a backup copy of Windows under whichever country’s law, don’t keep several instances of the same licensed copy - keep at most one copy, whether it’s modified or not. Some of you might wonder about the legality of creating a modified copy of legit software. So far, to the best of our knowledge, nobody has been harrased for having an nLitened copy of Windows - but then again, your mileage may vary depending on local country laws.
The rule stated above goes double for any of your clients. Obviously, it’s a very, very bad idea to give out copies of your own installation because of the license key which belongs to one person and them alone. In other words, you’ll have to be able to tailor the installation for your clients using their own install CDs - which is a neccessity anyway considering they have their own preferences and needed drivers. Either way, don’t get tempted to spread around your copy of the OS - or worse yet, theirs. The clients probably wouldn’t take kindly to it, and neither would the BSA.
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Am fully campus licenced and Software asurance member, and i develop custom installs for deployment.
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100% legal here !!!
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rozojc wrote:
Well, I'm gonna step into this. smgoller: yes, that is illegal.
Say I have a legal Serial Number. If I download the XP installer off the Internet, EVEN if I am planning to use my 100% legal Serial with it, it's illegal, as I should only obtain XP by buying it. I know it sounds weird, but that's just the way Microsoft plays...
first of all thats not the wierd way microsoft works. thats the wierd way softwares rules are made.
secondly microsoft would prefere you using a ILLEGAL xp version then linux any day of the week. they will never take a single users/ person at home to court over it. only companies.
im not saying this makes it legal. but if they dont care. should i?
Last edited by elmo (2007-11-09 7:55:38 am)
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