One reason I enjoy Microsoft is their encouragement for young people to take an interest in technology. Digigirlz is one of these events that encourages young women to get involved with technology.

I was asked to present an introduction to programming session in Lehi Utah. As part of the hands-on activity, I created a small progam called FindYourPrince. This allowed the girls to have their first experience with programming in a fun game-like environment. Inspired from the old-logo type of programming I did as a kid -- the girls issued c# commands to control a little red convertible around the screen. The goal was to squash (run-over) all of the frogs leaving the last frog as her prince. To make the experience a little more fun they could then learn to control the car with the arrow keys and add game objects like a bomb to challenge the player.

I am writing this blog post as an easy way for the girls to download the session files from home.

Student Download

Everything needed to get started with this can be found here at the end of this post.

Disclaimer

Although DigiGirlz is a Microsoft event, all source code, presentation material, and binaries are of my own creation for demonstration purposes. They are neither endorsed by Microsoft, nor distributed by Microsoft.

DigiGirlzFindPrince2016.zip

One reason I enjoy Microsoft is their encouragement for young people to take an interest in technology. Digigirlz is one of these events that encourages young women to get involved with technology.

I was asked to present an introduction to programming session in Lehi Utah. As part of the hands-on activity, I created a small progam called DigiCars. This allowed the girls to have their first experience with programming in a fun game-like environment. Inspired from the old-logo type of programming I did as a kid -- the girls issued c# commands to control a little red converable around the screen. The goal was to squash (run-over) all 12 of the frogs leaving the last frog as her prince. To make the experience a little more personal each frog was a friend from their facebook profile.

I am writing this blog post as an easy way for the girls to download the session files from home.

Student Download

Everything needed to get started with this can be found here at the end of this post.

Disclaimer

Although DigiGirlz is a Microsoft event, all source code, presentation material, and binaries are of my own creation for demonstration purposes. They are neither endorsed by Microsoft, nor distributed by Microsoft.

DigiGirlz2015.zip

One reason I enjoy Microsoft is their encouragement for young people to take an interest in technology. Digigirlz is one of these events that encourages young women to get involved with technology.

I was asked to present an introduction to programming session in Lehi Utah. As part of the hands-on activity, I created a small progam called DigiCars. This allowed the girls to have their first experience with programming in a fun game-like environment. Inspired from the old-logo type of programming I did as a kid -- the girls issued c# commands to control a little red converable around the screen. The goal was to squash (run-over) all 12 of the frogs leaving the last frog as her prince. To make the experience a little more personal each frog was a friend from their facebook profile.

I am writing this blog post as an easy way for the girls to download the session files from home.

Student Download

Everything needed to get started with this can be found here at the end of this post.

Disclaimer

Although DigiGirlz is a Microsoft event, all source code, presentation material, and binaries are of my own creation for demonstration purposes. They are neither endorsed by Microsoft, nor distributed by Microsoft.

For each flavor (or version) of Windows there is a different flavor (version) of the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT). To help determine which version to use I have created a support matrix below.

A major focus of Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 7 was to make the toolset more accessible when IT professionals needed to repair or diagnose a machine. Prior to version 7 the only officially supported way to use the DaRT tools was via CD/DVD. But now, with DaRT 7, Microsoft supports several deployment options (CD/DVD, USB, recovery partition, and PXE boot). With these options DaRT can always be available when needed. If, for example, DaRT is deployed to a PXE server, an IT administrator no longer has to hunt down his DaRT CD/DVD, but can now choose to boot DaRT straight from the network. Tada!

Requiring a Local Admin Password

With DaRT being more accessible to IT administrators it also makes it more accessible to non-IT administrators. In these cases it might make sense to require a local Administrator's password when booting into the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset. This assumes of course that your users are not running in the context of a local administrator.

This feature is more a capability of WinRE than DaRT itself. The first thing to understand is that some deployment options always require a local administrator’s password. When WinPE is booted to what it believes is fixed media then a password is always required. This is the case for a recovery partition, and some USB drives. So, if you are deploying to a local partition (or recovery partition) the password is always on – no configuration necessary. If however you are deploying DaRT by some other means – particularly PXE – then follow the instructions listed here.

When This Doesn’t Make Sense

There are several scenarios where enabling a local administrator password doesn’t make sense –

1. If your company does not manage a local administrator password on each workstation then it doesn’t make sense to enable this password option. You have essentially locked your IT-Professionals out of DaRT too.
2. Locksmith is the wildcard here. Locksmith can be used to reset a local administrator’s password. The common case for using Locksmith is when you have forgotten the local administrator’s password. So a local administrator’s password to get into Locksmith defeats the purpose. My suggestion is to only enable Locksmith on portable media.
3. If your company deploys DaRT onto a local/recovery partition a password is always required so there is no configuration necessary. I do not know of any way to turn that feature off for fixed media.

How to Configure DaRT to Require a Local Administrators Password

1. Create a local administrator’s account on every machine. You might want to make this account specifically for the DaRT tools. Only share the password with those authorized to run the DaRT toolset.
2. When creating the DaRT media one of the last steps in the wizard is to add additional files. This is where we will make the configuration change. Click Show Files at this step in the wizard.
3. Drill down until you find the file sources\recovery\tools\WinREConfig.xml. Open this file with your favorite text editor. Add the tag <AlwaysAuthenticate/> somewhere within the <Recovery> tag.
   
   Note: In order to save changes to this file you will need to either run your editor as an Administrator or change permissions on the file to give yourself write persmissions.
   
   More details on this configuration file can be found here -- https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749546(v=ws.10).aspx
4. Once the file is saved then continue creating your DaRT image. You can then deploy DaRT via your favorite deployment option.

Good luck! I hope this was helpful.

Here is a brief summary of the setup instructions --

1. Install DaRT 7 and use the DaRT Recovery Image Wizard to create an ISO that includes the Remote Connection tool.

2. Extract the files (DartConfig.dat, FirewallExceptionChange.dll, LockingHooks.dll, MSDartCmd.dll, rdpcore.dll, rdpencom.dll, and RemoteRecovery.exe) from the boot.wim found in the ISO. Include these in your WinPE MDT image.

3. Configure the RemoteRecovery.exe tool to launch in the Unattend.xml file of your MDT image.

4. Optionally, automate the connection process by capturing the Inv32.xml file after launching RemoteRecovery.exe.

More detailed instructions can be found here --

https://www.deploymentresearch.com/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/36/Software-Assurance-Pays-Off-Remote-Connection-to-WinPE-during-MDT-SCCM-deployments.aspx

 If DaRT is installed on a PXE server or on a local recovery partition then this cool new feature allows a technician to fix your machine without having to show up at your doorstep.

Well… Almost…

Sometimes getting to the DaRT toolset can be a process. The user must make some choices as to whether they want their network initialized, whether to remap drives, and what language to use. A user may need to enter a few Bitlocker keys, or even deal with automatically detected startup issues. With all this done, the user can finally launch the toolset and start the Remote Connection tool. But these extra steps may force a long conversation with the Helpdesk or a technician tramping on your flowers.

Wouldn’t the experience be nice to have the Remote Connection tool start automatically on boot? Here is how you can make this happen.

The Solution -- Launching the Remote Connection Tool at Startup

With a simple configuration file change you can modify our DaRT media to boot directly to the Remote Connection tool. When a connection is established the DaRT boot sequence will continue, leaving all the hard choices for the technician – and thus leaving your flowers intact.

Note: This method assumes you are using DHCP, otherwise you will need to create a script that assigns a network address before launching the Remote Connection tool.

Instructions

1. From Windows 7 start menu, run “DaRT Recovery Image”.
2. Go through the wizard up until you get to the “Additional Files” page.
   Note: Don’t forget to enable Remote Connections or else starting the Remote Connection tool at startup will have no effect.
3. The “Add additional tools” page in the wizard will allow you to customize DaRT to your heart’s content. At this point click the “Show Files…” button. 
4. Navigate to the Windows\System32 directory within this temporary folder 
5. Modify the “winpeshl.ini” file permission to give “modify” permissions to your current user.  
6. Open the “winpeshl.ini” file and modify the file to look like this:

Note: This example is also found in the DaRT help file.

1. Tweak the script to get the experience you are looking for.

"%windir%\system32\netstart.exe -network -remount"
This line skips the initial prompts that ask if you would like to start the network and remount the drives. The network has to be initialized before we start the remote 

"cmd /C start %windir%\system32\RemoteRecovery.exe -nomessage"
This line launches the Remote Connection tool telling it to bypass showing the customized message to confirm you want to start a remote connection. Remove the “-nomessage” command line switch if you want the customized message to appear.

"%windir%\system32\WaitForConnection.exe"
This line pauses until a connection is made or until the Remote Connection tool is closed. 

"%SYSTEMDRIVE%\sources\recovery\recenv.exe"
This line continues the boot sequence. 

1. After saving your changes continue building the DaRT media with the wizard.

Your DaRT media will now automatically launch the Remote Connection tool at startup.