Easy TrueCrypt Volume Mounting

Posted onOctober 4, 2006 Edit on by Peter Hesse

Adapted from Lifehacker, which in turn was a link to allthingsmarked about mounting a TrueCrypt volume with one click.

I carry a USB memory stick with me, on which I store a myriad of private stuff including my Password Safe database, and a copy of Firefox Portable and Thunderbird Portable which are configured with my software certificates for reading encrypted email. The entirety of the stick is a TrueCrypt volume, which I used to mount via a large number of mouse clicks.

The above article contains instructions on how to write a batch file to automatically mount your TrueCrypt volume. Unfortunately, Windows does not provide a way (in a batch file) to mask the password, so the password gets displayed on your screen. Yecch. With a little searching I found that Windows XP and later contain a component for capturing and masking passwords. So, I’ve written a VB script which duplicates what Mark Ursino did in a batch file—with passwords that don’t display on the screen. Combined with an autorun.inf, mounting my USB drive just got easier, faster, and a little bit safer. Download and rename the below files as appropriate, and don’t forget to change the lines near the top of tcmount.vbs to the locations appropriate to your computer:

tcmount.txt (.vbs)
autorun.txt (.inf)

5 thoughts on “Easy TrueCrypt Volume Mounting”

  1. Josh B says:
    August 14, 2008 at 7:38 pm

    Could you please re-upload these files?

  2. John says:
    May 16, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    Same problem here. Broken links.

  3. Jim says:
    June 9, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Please fix the links!

  4. Jeremy says:
    February 22, 2010 at 8:08 am

    The magic code you seek is probably something like:

    Set oScriptPW = CreateObject(“ScriptPW.Password”)
    WScript.StdOut.Write “Type password and press the Enter key: ”
    strPassword = oScriptPW.GetPassword()
    WScript.StdOut.WriteLine vbCrLf & “You entered: ” & strPassword

    but alas, the scriptpw.dll is no where to be found on any XP or Vista machine I have, regardless of what is reported by the guy who wrote http://www.windowsitpro.com/WindowsScripting/Article/ArticleID/22712/22712.html (the article that inspired the solution.)

  5. Jeremy says:
    February 22, 2010 at 4:58 pm

    Correction— it works fine on XP. I don’t know what I was doing at 8:08 this morning, but obviously it was far past my bedtime.

    There is a method for popping up an IE window to get a password posted here:
    http://www.robvanderwoude.com/vbstech_ui_password.php
    but wow, that’s a lot of junk for something as simple as getting a masked password. I think I’d rather downgrade my vista to XP. 🙂

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