Hacking the U3 into a Switchblade on Windows Vista and Windows 7
by Hans Kokx on Feb.21, 2010, under Security, Visitor Favorite, Windows
Straight out of the hak5 wiki, I've been trying to build my own USB Switchblade. Unfortunately, at the time of the episode, the best we had was Windows XP. Well, time has passed, things have changed, and I'm sitting on a Windows 7 box (honestly, I only use it for gaming), and I no longer have an XP box in the house. The instructions for creating a Switchblade involve running a utility that reflashes your U3 capable USB thumbdrive with a custom .iso that includes all your fun tools. Unfortunately, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operate quite a bit differently than Windows XP, and the utility that reflashes your pen drive complains that "you can only update one U3 compatible device at a time," and that you should "unplug all other devices." Fortunately, I have found a solution.
For this to work, you're going to need a couple of things. First, you're going to need the LPInstaller. If you don't know what that is, or where to find it, Google is your friend. Next, you will need a .iso to flash onto your drive. Since that's out of the scope of this article, I will leave the searching up to you. I would suggest looking into GonZor's switchblade .iso. Once you have your tools assembled, read on.
First thing's first, you will need to extract LPInstaller using WinRAR or 7-zip, or the like. Your new directory will have another LPInstaller, a couple of .dll's, some text files, and the like. You will need to create a new file in this directory, called qa.ini. qa.ini will include two lines:
[QA] LocalISOPath=C:\Path\To\Switchblade\ISO.iso
The hard part is over. Now, run cmd.exe with elevated permissions, cd into the LPInstalller directory, and run:
LPInstaller.exe local
Follow the installation instructions, and in moments you will have a working USB Switchblade. This hack can be attributed to Andre.
August 14th, 2010 on 7:45 pm
mmm nope, not working, i used everything you said and haven’t noticed any change at all, have 7 ult x64
August 16th, 2010 on 1:25 pm
This is the exact method I used to get my switchblade working in Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Try re-reading the steps, and if you’re still having problems, let me know where you’re stumbling, and what you’ve tried.
November 7th, 2010 on 10:24 pm
hi i downloaded the lp and winrar im just trying to comnvert the lp to have the dll files but all get is a lp.exe in the .rar file i created
November 7th, 2010 on 10:26 pm
oki got it to convert now is the qa.ini supposed to b in text format
March 30th, 2011 on 5:51 am
I would like to know if there’s a way or another to make Windows Vista compatible with U3 because each time i plug my U3 pendrive to a Windows Vista laptop it asks me to format it!
March 30th, 2011 on 7:59 am
You are alright to format it, as long as you understand that you will lose any data on the drive. If you don’t have any data on it, you really have nothing to lose. Windows will be unable to format the U3 partition.
April 27th, 2011 on 10:23 am
where to get lpinstaller
April 27th, 2011 on 10:32 am
I believe Google holds the answer.