Martin’s Tech Blog – Page 3 – My Technology Blog

Recently I needed to fix the mbr of a WinXP system and also clone the drive. I had used the free version of EaseUS Partition Master before to do this and had good results with the utility. I went ahead and purchased the latest Pro version (currently version 14.5) of the utility. In the main widow of the Pro version there is a selection for “WinPE Creator” in the top menu. It was something that I wasn’t familiar it, as it is not present on the free version. WinPE can be thought of like a more powerful MS-Dos boot disk. The PE in WinPE stands for Preinstall Environment. You can use it for a tasks such as troubleshooting a Windows system, performing recovery operations, running third party utilities (like EaseUS Partition Master), and also installing the Windows operating system. You can’t use WinPE long term as it stops after 72 hours of use. So it is good for those times of emergency when you need to fix something on your Windows box.

I was able to create a bootable WinPE environment that had EaseUS Partition Manager on it. While looking more into WinPE, I came across a handy WinPE creation tool called AOMEI PE Builder. It creates a bootable WinPE environment along with a number of portable tolls and drivers. During the creation of the WinPE environment you can add in some of your own portable applications. There is a size limit to how much you can add and have the environment startup ok. I was able to add EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to the WinPE environment but I was not able to add EaseUS Partition Manager. Not sure what the issue is, but a partition manager tool is included in the AOMEI PE build environment.

From researching the single boot creation utilities, I ran into a number of multiboot utilities. An easy one to use is Ventoy. You just run Ventoy which creates a bootable USB drive and then you drag and drop your ISO files on to your USB drive. Reboot and make sure your USB drive is chosen in your computer’s BIOS as the drive to boot up with. Ventoy comes up with a menu that has your ISO files as selections. I was able to include a number of Linux distributions and I also included the WinPE ISO that I created with EaseUS Partition Master earlier. Worked pretty well.

Links to utilities in post:

EaseUS Partition Master https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/

AOMEI PE Builder https://www.ubackup.com/pe-builder.html

Ventoy https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Welcome to the first post of my technology blog which will cover computer related topics like languages, programming, and hardware. Also computer history will be covered from time to time. In fact, this post covers some of my computer history.

I was lucky to have been around at the start of the personal computer revolution. When I was still a senior in High School, Popluar Electronics published their January 1975 issue which had as its feature story, the Altair 8800 Minicomputer kit. This was part 1, part 2 would be in the next issue. I did buy these issues. They are long gone now. The complete kit included an Intel 8080 microprocessor, 256 bytes of RAM, a front panel with light and switches, a metal case and an 8 amp power supply for $397. Fully assembled it was $498. This cover launched the personal computer industry.

The one class I took during my senior year that helped me a lot in my computer career, was typing. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Knowing how to type helped with writing term papers too. I didn’t have a word processor back then, I had little portable manual typewriter.

After graduating from High School, I went to the University of Maryland for the 1975 fall semester. I became a Computer Science major. At the time, the University of Maryland was among only a handful of schools that were offering BS, MS, and Phd degrees in Computer Science (CMSC). There weren’t as many students in Computer Science at that time like there is today.

I don’t remember the name of the first CMSC class I took. It might have been CMSC 100. But the first computer language that I was formally introduced to was SIMPL-T. I don’t remember much about the language, but the teacher was Dr. Victor R. Basili. A friend of mine that I used to work with, also worked with Dr. Basili years later. It seems that Dr. Basili is still affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Computer Science Department. And in 2020, it will be 50 years since he started there. He is currently a Professor Emeritus.

That’s it for now. Catch you later.