Gola Kit: The Technician’s Toolkit for Windows Setup and Any Windows PC
Date Published
Gola Kit is the toolbox of a technician standing in front of a PC that will not start, or is about to be reinstalled. It is one small native Windows program with four pages: Files, Disks, Network and Recovery. It runs inside the Windows Setup screen itself (press Shift+F10, type gola) when the installation media was built with NTLoom, and it runs just as well on a normal Windows PC. It comes with every NTLoom license and is also the tool we use in our own service work.
Where the name comes from
A kit is what a technician carries. Not every tool there is, just the few needed on the spot, kept together in one roll. That is all this one is: the disk, file, network and recovery tools for a PC that will not start, in one small program.
Our tools are named after textile crafts, weaving and sewing, which are living crafts in Tunisia. NTLoom is the loom, Shuttle is the part of the loom that carries the thread across, Stitch joins the pieces into one garment, Bootlace laces up a computer's start-up over the network, Bobbin is the spool that holds several threads at once, so one USB stick carries several installers, and Kit is the technician's toolkit.
What makes it different
• It works inside Windows Setup. The tools are in the very environment that appears before Windows is installed, so a PC that cannot boot can still have its files saved, its disks read and its boot repaired. Nothing needs to be installed first.
• Every change asks first. Repairs ask you to type the target (D:, S:...), a backup shows what it will copy and where before it starts, and the wipe of a disk asks for the disk number typed twice and the word WIPE. A wrong answer does nothing.
• The old Windows is only read. A backup never changes, moves or deletes anything on the Windows it saves. It even reads the PC name from the registry files with a small reader of its own, so nothing is written to the old system.
• A restore never overwrites. A file that already exists is left alone, counted and listed in the report. Nothing is deleted anywhere by the Files group.
• The wipe exists only when it is allowed. In an installation image it is there only if the company profile ticks it; otherwise there is no wipe button and the code refuses. A misspelt switch never turns it on.
• English, French and formal Arabic. The Arabic window is truly mirrored, right to left, and the language can be changed on the spot.
• One small program. No PowerShell, no .NET, no web view and no extra DLLs: a single file of a few megabytes, light enough to live in Setup's memory.
Every feature
Files: back up and restore a client’s files
• Finds the Windows installations on every local volume and lists their users, with sizes counted in the background (you can stop the counting).
• Choose what to save: Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Downloads, Music, Videos and Favorites, or everything in the profile except the excluded items. Browser data (bookmarks, passwords and settings of Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox and Opera, never caches) is available and off by default.
• Pick files and folders by hand, several at once, from any drive of the PC including the other drives of the old Windows and connected shares. Leave out folders or files inside what is saved, save the list as gola-backup-list.txt and load it on the next PC, or start the program with --backup-list.
• Destination: a drive or folder, or a network share typed with a user name and password. The password is never stored or logged, and connections made here are removed on exit unless you ask to keep them. A new folder can be made right in the chooser.
• Safe by design: the free space is checked and the report says how much is free and how much is needed (if the disk really fills up, the job pauses so you can free space and resume); a destination on the same drive as the Windows being saved is refused, because an install would erase it; a folder that already holds a backup is refused so two backups are never mixed.
• Verified copies: the backup runs as Shuttle jobs. Each file is read back and compared, links and junctions are not followed, cloud placeholders are not downloaded, and an optional hash list can be saved. Pause, resume and cancel from the Copies tab; if you quit while a copy runs, the program asks and carries on at the next start.
• Names a drive cannot hold are decided once, at the end: the rest of the backup completes, then Retry failed asks whether to store those items under fixed names (every change is listed in the report and in shuttle-name-map.csv), retry as they are, or cancel. A drive that cannot hold a name or size is reported before it is tried.
• Looks after the PC while it works: the PC is kept awake during a copy, a laptop at 10 % battery or less pauses the job until it is plugged in, and a destination inside the Windows or Program Files folders of the running system is refused.
• Leaves the junk out: the recycle bin, caches, thumbnails, crash dumps, temporary files, hibernation and page files and the profile hives are not copied.
• A readable backup folder: the folder you chose holds one folder per user, the items picked by hand, a manifest (gola-backup.json) and a report. Anything that could not be saved is listed in the report, never skipped silently.
• Restore: choose a backup folder, read its details, and restore into a new folder (<folder>\<old PC>\<user>) that keeps the old tree. Putting files back into their original folders is explicit, needs the target folder’s name typed, and still never replaces an existing file.
Disks: see everything, change nothing unless asked
• Every disk and volume in plain words, read straight from Windows, with tags such as Windows installation found, EFI system partition, recovery, removable, read-only, offline and BitLocker locked, and a details card for the one you select.
• BitLocker unlock: a locked volume is recognized and explained; type the recovery key or password in a dialog and it is passed to Windows’ own tool without being shown or logged.
• Wipe a disk (only when allowed): shows the disk and its volumes, asks for the number typed twice and the word WIPE, lets you choose GPT (preselected) or MBR for a PC that starts in BIOS mode, then runs the clean and shows the output. It refuses the disk the program runs from, the disk of the running Windows and a disk holding a running backup. Enter cancels.
Network: get connected, reach the NAS
• Network adapters with state, DHCP, addresses, gateway and DNS, and a button to renew the address.
• One-button connection test: gateway, DNS server, a name lookup and a NAS you type (name or address), with plain-language answers.
• Network shares: connect (with a credentials dialog), disconnect and list. Windows Setup resolves no names, so the program looks the server name up itself and connects to the address; it also starts the service Windows needs for shares, which Setup does not run.
• Load drivers: pick a folder and every .inf below it is loaded, with a result per file and a count, then the disks and adapters are looked at again.
Recovery: repair an offline Windows
• Repair the boot files of a Windows you pick: you choose the boot partition from a list, it is never guessed, and you type its letter to confirm.
• Check a disk (read-only; a repair needs a typed confirmation), check system files offline, and check or repair the offline image health (the page tells you that an offline repair needs the install image of the same version).
• Show the boot configuration of the running system or of a store found on a volume, and set the default boot entry by picking one of the entries read from the store.
• List and add drivers of the offline Windows.
• Live output, real cancel: each tool runs hidden, its output streams into the log pane, Cancel ends the whole process tree, and a log file is kept.
Licenses for Shuttle and Stitch
• License on arrival: in an NTLoom image, the program can fetch both licenses during Windows Setup itself and write them into the new Windows just before the first restart, so the PC arrives licensed. It leaves a note in the new Windows saying what happened.
The window, the text menu and the command line
• Comfortable by default: an icon rail on the start side (Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4), F5 to look at the PC again, F1 for help, light and dark themes that follow Windows, and pages that scroll when the window is small.
• Read-only mode: --read-only disables every control that writes, for a window left open on a PC where nobody should click by mistake.
• A self-check at start: if a Windows tool the program relies on is missing, the matching button is disabled and the status line says which.
• A text menu as a fallback: gola text shows the same groups as a plain menu, and gola files, gola disks, gola network and gola recovery start one group.
• Extra tools of an image: a folder named in the NTLoom profile is copied into Setup’s environment and its programs are listed and started from the menu.
• Command line for automation: gola licence status|request|get|install with exit codes and JSON output, for unattended flows.
• Updates on an installed Windows: the program checks once a day for a newer version, shows what changed and installs it only when you click, keeps the previous version and can go back with gola update --rollback. In Windows Setup it does not update itself; a newer Kit arrives with a new NTLoom image.
How to get it
Kit is not available on its own. It comes with NTLoom: every NTLoom license includes a licensed Kit inside the installation media you build, switched on in the profile. It is also the internal tool of Gola, used in our own service work.
Good to know
• Inside Windows Setup, the whole Setup environment is loaded into memory, which is why the program is kept small and why the tools are added to an image only when the profile asks for them.
• On an installed Windows, most of Kit needs administrator rights. For that case there is gola-admin.exe, the same program, which asks for them once when it starts.
• Not covered: full-disk image backups, and OneDrive-redirected known folders (they are reached with the “everything in the profile” choice).
• Backups land in the folder you choose. Make sure the destination has room: the program counts, warns, and pauses a copy when the disk is really full.
• Wi-Fi is not covered yet: a Wi-Fi driver can be loaded, but Setup’s environment does not always carry the Wi-Fi service, so the adapter may not appear. A wired connection is the dependable way in Setup.
• Still being checked on real hardware: the newest builds have been tested with the program’s automated suite and in a virtual machine, and the full walk-through in a real Windows Setup on a physical PC is still being completed.
• A shared engine: the disk inventory of Kit is also what Bobbin uses to see the PC’s disks.