Microsoft(R)
Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 6.0 Release Notes
June 2008
Contents
Components
of Winternals Administrator's Pak technologies are now available as the
Microsoft(R) Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, which is part of the Microsoft
Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance. Customers looking for desktop
diagnostic and recovery tools with functionality similar to Administrator's Pak
should refer to the recently announced Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for
Software Assurance at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/optimizeddesktop.
More
information about the Winternals product acquisition can be found at http://www.winternals.com/Faq.aspx.
Microsoft
Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0 is a complete suite of powerful and
versatile tools that allow you to repair unbootable or locked-out systems,
restore lost data, and diagnose system and network issues while the system is
safely offline. Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0 includes the following tools:
·
All
existing WinRE tools
·
Disk
Commander
·
ERD
Registry Editor
·
Standalone
System Sweeper*
·
ERD
Commander
·
ERD
Help
·
LockSmith
·
Crash
Analyzer
·
Explorer
·
File
Search
·
File
Restore
·
Hotfix
Uninstall
·
System
File Repair
·
System
Information
·
TCP/IP
Config
·
Map
Network Drive
·
Solution
Wizard
·
Services
& Drivers
·
Disk
Management
·
Disk
Wipe
·
Event
Viewer
·
Autoruns
·
Zip/Unzip
Unsupported
platforms:
Supported
platforms:
Minimal
hardware requirements:
DaRT
6.0 Beta users
·
Any
Beta versions of DaRT must be uninstalled before this release version can be
installed.
What Has Changed Since DaRT version 5.0?
A
complete product review has been performed to meet Microsoft quality
requirements.
The
following tools have been added:
The
following tool has been removed:
The
following enhancements have been made:
Except
for these modifications, Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0 is in
parity with the features shipped with Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 5.0.
Known Limitations for this release
·
You
might need to manually extract and install 64-bit definition updates for
Standalone System Sweeper
The following is a known issue with
the Standalone System Sweeper. As a temporary workaround, you can follow these
steps in order to install up-to-date definitions on the x64 version of the
Standalone System Sweeper.
1.
From a browser on a computer that is connected
to the Internet, go to the Microsoft
Security Portal and download the x64 version of Standalone System Sweeper
definition updates.
2.
Expand the contents of the definition package as
follows. Open a command prompt, and type: mpam-fex64
/x: <folder path> where <folder
path> is the directory to which the extracted contents need to be
copied.
e.g. mpam-fex64.exe /x: “%ProgramFiles%\DefUpdates”.
3.
Copy the extracted contents to a removable media
device, such as a USB flash drive.
4.
Insert the USB flash drive into the machine
where you want to run the Standalone System Sweeper.
5.
Start MSDaRT and
launch the Standalone System Sweeper.
6.
From the MSDaRT menu, launch Explorer.
7.
Copy MPASBase.vdm, MPASDlta.vdm, mpavbase.vdm,
mpavdlta.vdm and mpengine.dll into the Updates folder relative to the windows
path of the operating system selected:
e.g. c:\Windows\Standalone System
Sweeper\Definition Updates\Updates
8.
Wait for a few
seconds. The anti-malware and anti-virus version numbers on the Standalone
System Sweeper home page will be refreshed to show the new version numbers.
·
Unicode
characters are not displayed in some circumstances
If a user deletes a file that has Unicode
characters in its file name and tries to restore the file using the File
Restore tool, the file will not be found. This only occurs when using
characters from a language other than the language of the Vista DVD used to
create the DaRT ERD CD.
This is a known issue that will be resolved
in the final release.
·
Bitlocker
partition unlocking
Win RE Bitlocker
partition unlocking tool will only unlock one Bitlocker volume. If multiple
volumes are locked by Bitlocker, Standalone System Sweeper, File restore and
Explorer will only be able to process files on one locked volume. This may
result in a file not being found when trying to restore a file from multiple
volumes or may result in malware not getting detected when a user specifies a
“full scan” to scan all drives on a computer.
To work around this issue, only work with a single volume at a time. This is a known Win RE bug.
·
MSDaRT 6.0 command line installation will silently fail if run with the quite
mode option unless it is run using elevated administrator permissions.
MSDaRT 6.0
installation supports the normal MSI options for command line
installation. Please refer to Command-Line Options
for more details about the various available switches.
·
File
search fails to move a folder to a different volume
While
attempting to move a folder to a different volume in File Search, an error is
returned stating "An error occurred while writing the file [filename].
Ensure the drive has sufficient space and the destination path is accessible”.
Moving folders
between volumes is not supported by the File Search application. To work around
this, use the Explorer to move the folder.
·
There
is no Input Method Editor (IME) support on ERD
An input Method
Editor (IME) allows you to type double-byte characters for languages such as
Japansese. This functionality would be provided by the Win PE/Win RE
environment, but by default Win PE/Win RE does not include support
for IME. To enable IME support in Win RE and to turn on the ERD CD, follow
the steps from the following KB article to create a Win RE image that
supports IME and then create the ERD CD from the image.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926181/
When creating the Win PE/Win RE
image, it is essential that the WinPE-SRT-Package is
added using the PEImg.exe tool. Failure to add this package to the image
will prevent the generated ERD CD from working. For information on how to use PEImg to add packages to a Windows PE image please see
Building
a Windows PE Image.
·
Some
data may not be available on machines where the drive letters are remapped
This problem is known to occur on bit locker
enabled machines as well as multi boot machines. The problem is that some information in the
offline registry has hard coded drive letters and MSDaRT uses different letters
for the same volumes. The typical
effects include not having access to certain local user accounts in ERD Registry
Editor or Autoruns.
Additionally, some tools may not be able to get the properties which
rely on resolving file paths.
For
documentation on how to create an ERD repair disk, please refer to the
MSDaRT.CHM help file, which is available in the "Microsoft Diagnostics and
Recovery Toolset" installation folder. For help on how to use the tools in
Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset 6.0, please use the Help available on
the MSDaRT Tools menu.
None
of the files in the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0 are
Redistributables.
For
more information about Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0 see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/optimizeddesktop.
We are
interested in your feedback on Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 6.0.
You can send your feedback directly to dartreq@microsoft.com.
This
feedback is not a support channel, but your feedback will help us to plan
future changes for these tools to make them more useful to you in the future.