The Tiny Hexer hex editor is one of the best of its kind. Use it not only to open files, but also to access partitions Bytewise and to read process memory.

Tiny Hexer in action

There is a special edition of the Tiny Hexer for PE Builder. It can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website .

After loading the plug-in with the Add button it's ready for use with no further settings required.

Plug-In Setup: Network Drivers

Most mainboards today have a Gigabit LAN adapter for which Windows XP has no driver; that's why you need to install the driver manually if you want network support. Driver plug-ins are available for the most common LAN chips: 3com 3c940, Broadcom 57 series and Intel PRO 1000. As an example, here are the steps required to install the 3com 3c940 driver, required for the Asus P4P800.

First, download the driver from the Asus FTP server and unpack it on the hard drive. Select only the files el2k_cpp.dll, el2k_xp.sys and el2000x.inf from the decompressed files and copy them to the plug-in directory nic_el2k_xp.

Once you have enabled the plug-in (Enable/Disable button), the driver is automatically loaded when you run BartPE, provided network support is used.

More Plug-Ins

More plug-ins can also be added, of course. The ones you need depend on the applications you want to run. These could be virus scanners, hard drive tools, image programs etc.

The help files describe how each plug-in is installed. In the simplest case it's enough to load the CAB file, as with Tiny Hexer. Sometimes, the program has to be manually extracted or installed and then copied. The PE Builder website has many links to other plug-ins that can be integrated into PE Builder. With 4.7 GB of capacity, a DVD has oodles of room for nearly any plug-in you could want to use.