Wow, this is the largest batchfile I've ever seen! And I thought my 200-ish line one from high school was pushing it. Honestly huge respect for having the dedication to go this far with batch. I knew about the pseudo-function-calling features and a little bit of the weird syntax, but just skimming there's a lot of stuff in here I haven't seen before. Usually people saying "X in Y KiB" are doing some crazy linker shenanigans, so this was refreshing.
Also, "Windows To Go" and "Windows To Stay" are really funny feature names.
Speaking of large batch files, if anyone has ever softmodded a Wii, there is a good chance you used ModMii, which is by far the largest batch program I've seen. The main script [1] is a batch file that clocks in at over a megabyte. I used to be pretty into the Wii modding scene and remember talking with the author of that script about random batch things a few times. I can't imagine maintaining a file that big.
It's sad that so many projects simply stopped updating a decade or more ago... the first 90% of work is building a USB loader and the second 90% is maintaining it, and neither the author nor I want to figure it out. I read online that SNEEK lets you screenshot games... it doesn't work (wrong filesystem? neek2o and sneek have a different feature set?). Also god all those Exception (DSI) and learning a decade later they were segfaults... yummy memory-unsafe embedded programming.
I found that ModMii leaked some global variables from a (failed) SNEEK install to a system menu mod('s help file), and being written in Batch certainly explains things...
I once knew a (very old) old accounting system that had to work around a 64kB limit and therefor used a programmatically generated set of many hundreds batch files batch files calling each other (not containing the program logic of course).
But each of them was less than 100 lines long.
But 27 kLOC for the WII thing or 3 kLOC for the recovery tool which even looks a bit more convoluted then the WII thing sounds interesting to maintain.
On the other hand, if it works, no dependencies no 200 MB binary blob.
Not to get TOO far off topic, but you just reminded me of the 300+ line batch file I was using for my BBS back in the early 90s. Lots of errorlevel checks to handle door transitions, Fidonet, etc.
You could get some ridiculously complicated batch files if you really needed the added functionality.
I write tools for video game studios occasionally. You can’t double click a ps1 script and have it run, and you need to change the execution policy for powershell scripts to run. Those two hurdles for non technical people mean that we still write batch scripts
AFAIK the "Windows Recovery Environment" is actually a stripped-down minimal version of Windows missing most of the normal userland and parts of the kernel, which people have extended and customised in various ways.
The biggest 3. problems in resolving clownstrike debacle are to know what and where to delete (if you don't know, you also can delete everything as well), bitlocker locked hard drives and having a lot of VMs running on Windows out there.
The first problem, however, is more significant, but you even won't come to solving if you've encrypted filesystem. And then you have to do it for each and every device/VM. It's just too much.
if you could boot into safe mode, then you already knew what to do and what to delete. Just imagine - bsod - you don't know why. A hint may be shown ;)
My process for this is usually:
- Poke at the EXE for a few hours to days. Sometimes it's just a self-extracting executable and you can just find the raw firmware binary. Sometimes you have to spend a few days relearning the basics of R2/Ghidra, and eventually can grab the firmware.
- Then, if you've found it, figure out how to load it. When you think you have an idea, make sure it's really late and you're deliriously tired, so you're SURE you can do it without bricking it. Plus, where's the fun in not bricking it? You can always take that random Pomona SOIC knockoff clip and start dumping random ROMs off whatever chips.
- Finally, if you were awake enough to not fall for the previous step - scrap all the work you've done, and commit to spending a while figuring out how to create a bootable windows USB. Or, if you can't get that to work for one of the many possible reasons, borrow a windows laptop. But you're probably too tired for that at this point anyway, so create a windows VM in QEMU, and repeatedly restart your machine as you mess with configs to get passthrough working for whatever you need to get the VM to connect to the device. Launch the utility, start the EXE - it starts working. Get so excited, you accidentally disconnect everything halfway through. Somehow the monitor seems to still work, but you swear there's just something not quite right about it. A few years later, take out the SOIC clip again.
(based on an agglomeration of my personal mishaps)
In all likelihood, yes - this project will likely allow you to do that perfectly fine! But I'd be prepared for the installer to be total bloatware that doesn't work or works for most of the process before something goes wrong.
Also, "Windows To Go" and "Windows To Stay" are really funny feature names.
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