The Working Installation Storage Platform Project

Working Installation Storage Platform

Welcome!

Welcome to the home page for the WISP LiveCD project. From here, you can obtain information on WISP and its usage as well as obtain a free copy of the software.

What is WISP?

WISP is a Debian GNU/Linux LiveCD which allows you to create an image of a working Windows installation. In this sense, the word image refers to a file containing a representation of the Windows install, not (for instance) a file containing a scanned picture or clipart. In essence, you can use WISP to create a snapshot of the condition of your copy of Windows.

How is this useful? If something later happens to your Windows installation (such as infection by a virus or other malware), you can use the snapshot to restore it to the state it was in when you created the image. This means that all of the settings you had adjusted and all of the software you had installed by the time you made the image would be present once you finished restoring it.

Of course, you could just reinstall Windows from scratch, set all of those settings by hand, and reinstall the programs you want to be able to use. But if you have a very customized installation that involves a lot of settings tweaks or if you have a lot of drivers, software, and other odds and ends to install, this can be a frustrating waste of time. Using WISP, you go through that process once and essentially save your work to a file. Then, in the future, you just restore from the WISP image file rather than having to do that work again.

How do I use it?

WISP is a LiveCD. This means that you can obtain a CD image (provided in .iso format), burn the CD image to a disc using a CD burner, and then boot your computer using that CD. The CD will contain a small and specialized version of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, which will load into memory and then run the WISP recovery image software. Once that software is running, you can follow the on-screen steps to create or restore a recovery image.

For more information, please see the instructions page. If you have difficulty using WISP or experience problems with the software, you may wish to visit the WISP forum.

Resources

If you want to obtain a copy of WISP, please visit the download page.

For examples of how WISP can be used, including screen shots and a description of the steps involved, take a look at the instructions page.

If you are having trouble using WISP, please read the support page or view the WISP forum.

Any other questions, comments, bug reports, or other feedback should be directed to the WISP forum as well.