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I read a long time ago that you should set the truecrypt boot prompt to say something besides enter password.

Is this still true? How can I do this, google search returns nothing useful.

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2 Answers

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In system encryption settings, assuming you are using full disk encryption, you can change the bootloader screen options to show a custom message like so:

enter image description here

resulting in:

enter image description here

Keep in mind this does not really provide any extra security. Pressing escape will reveal a truecrypt message and if you are only encrypting one partition (e.g. dual booting Linux/Windows and only encrypting Windows) it will reveal your Linux bootloader.

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I understand that it won't provide more security, it's only intended to slow down people who don't realize what it is. I intend to have it say Operation System Not Found. – Malfist Feb 1 '11 at 0:38
Well this should succeed in that regard. If you want to slow down slightly more tech-savvy people even more, you would do well to disable (or make outputless) the ESC menu and change the boot strings as outlined in my answer, in addition to the steps mentioned by John. – Matthieu Cartier Feb 1 '11 at 0:40
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Whilst what John T says is true, this will fool nobody with competence in the security field, as the bootloader still clearly states itself to be the TrueCrypt boot loader when looking at it in an editor (or indeed, when you press ESC). You will probably fool some more people if you modify the boot loader strings as shown here, but even this won't fool many.

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