Turnkey System makes HD inaccessible

[Amanda_W]

Hi, I don't know if anyone can direct me to the right info for this issue, but here goes...We (my company) purchased a computer that delivers tutorials and virtual experiences involved in Healthcare. There is no way to access the hard drive of the computer, no start button. The computer boots and goes right to the stored applications. There is an application on the system that we would like to extract, but we do not know how since it isn't readily accessible. The company we purchased from is no longer in business, so they cannot help. Any ideas? We tried f12 to reach the network but it didn't do much good. Should we be accessing the boot menu instead? Maybe get it to boot differently??

 

[Harvey]

You could remove the drive from the machine and connect it as a slave to another machine, either directly (SATA or PATA) or through an external adapter that outputs USB/e-SATA, etc. That would allow you to boot to the other machine and read the files on the drive you want to access.

 

[Zargon]

what he said.

 

[SimMike2]

Maybe get a Linux distribution which will load and boot from a CD image. Still the easiest is probably taking the drive out and connecting to another computer.

 

[C1]

If the application is executing directly as a bootable compiled executable, then I dont see how you will extract any part of it that would be useful.

If it is a Windows thingy, then CTRL+Alt+Del might bring up the Task Manager which should allow ending program execution of the start up program (but this might be disabled as part of customization).

 

[dawks]

If the application is executing directly as a bootable compiled executable, then I dont see how you will extract any part of it that would be useful.

If it is a Windows thingy, then CTRL+Alt+Del might bring up the Task Manager which should allow ending program execution of the start up program (but this might be disabled as part of customization).

Yea lots going on here. It could be custom software/OS bundle and no matter what you do, you wont be able to just extract the program. Your best bet might be to do a bit-for-bit disk clone with something like acronis. Then test the new disk and save it for later, or find similar hardware if you need multiple installs. Potentially you could do a physical to virtual migration, and take the software virtual inside vmware as well.

If its a Windows app (you'd know by the Windows boot screen), then yes, CTRL+ALT+DEL should allow you to bring up the taskmanager, and kill the app. Could be that they've disabled explorer.exe so you wouldnt see anything but a blue screen. But with taskmanager you could use it to start a 'new task' from the applications tab and start explorer.exe
Its pretty difficult to disable the CTRL+ALT+DEL I believe without hooking the kernel.

You can swap explorer.exe (Windows Shell/GUI) for another application. This is done in the registry somewhere. Thats how shell mods like litestep.exe worked (you can actually put a new GUI on windows). So I'm sure there are some kiosk programs that do this. Again CTRL+ALT+DEL should get around this. Once into explorer.exe with this or safemode you should be able to disable the app and restore explorer so the computer boots normally. Then see if you can extract the app.

If its Windows you could try Safemode with F8 during boot.

 

[Amanda_W]

Thank you so much for all the great ideas! I am going to try the Task Manager option first, since it sounds the easiest. Thank you again and I will post the results

 

[Zargon]

If the application is executing directly as a bootable compiled executable, then I dont see how you will extract any part of it that would be useful.

If it is a Windows thingy, then CTRL+Alt+Del might bring up the Task Manager which should allow ending program execution of the start up program (but this might be disabled as part of customization).

CTRL+SHIFT+ESC is the hotkey for task manager