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How to boot truecrypted VHD via usb?

live windows windows 8.1 truecrypt vhd booting usb boot

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#1 msalsal

msalsal
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    United Arab Emirates

Posted 15 September 2015 - 11:00 AM

Hi,

I made a bootable windows 8.1 VHD (two parted: FAT32 and NTFS) image and after booting it from USB, I installed truecrypt 7.1a in it. I had to bring the VHD live using VirtualBox software to do this and then encrypted the system partition (C:) using turecrypt. After reset, the OS comes successfully live with no problem.

But, when trying to boot that VHD using the same USB using Grub4Dos and creating a menu.lst file, the OS shows a BSOD screen after a while and get to reset. I tried the chainloading mechanism by utilizing "TrueCrypt Rescue Disk" image or even a capture of MBR sectors (first 64) caught by BootIce tool. But the problem remained.

I copied the MBR image into the VHD's first partition (made bootable using bcdboot tool) when deploying this technique.

Here is my grub4dos sample I used in USB part. That is, the menu.lst in the root of USB device.

 

title Portable myvhd.vhd - FiraDisk  FILEDISK - 2.5 GB
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /myvhd.vhd
map --heads=2 --sectors-per-track=18 --mem (md)0x800+4 (99)
map /myvhd.vhd (hd0)
map --hook
write (99) [FiraDisk]\nStartOptions=disk,vmem=find:/myvhd.vhd,boot;\n\0
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0)+1
map --status

 

The menu.lst file inside the first partition of VHD is:

 

unhide (hd0,1)

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

chainloader (hd0,0)/tc.dat
 

The tc.dat is actually the "TrueCrypt Rescue Disk ISO image" file which was renamed for simplicity.

I made many changes to the scripts, but nothing improved. Surprisingly, the encrypted VHD comes live when attaching it to a VirtualBox VM. I checked the Disk Management app and saw the first partition (FAT32) was of 'system' type. But before encryption, the 'system' partition was put on the USB drive itself. I think this is a key for VirtualBox to be able to boot my VHD and the USB boot process to not be able to boot the VHD.

 

Any help from you guys

Thanks







Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: live windows, windows 8.1, truecrypt, vhd booting, usb boot

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