Using FEC in Portable Mode

If you have a dongle license, you can use Forensic Email Collector in portable mode as follows:

1. Copy the entire contents of the Forensic Email Collector installation folder to a flash drive, including all of its subfolders. The installation folder is typically located at:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Metaspike\Forensic Email Collector"

Note: You do not need a special version of FEC—you can use the standard FEC files in your installation directory.

2. Locate the folder on the flash drive where you copied FEC's installation folder and files, and create a new 0-byte file in the same folder as "FEC.exe" named portablemode without an extension. (You can download a sample portablemode file here)

The created file should look as follows among FEC.exe and other DLLs:

3. Make sure that the flash drive is writable by the user that is running FEC. This is necessary so that FEC can write its configuration information to the flash drive when needed.

4. Insert the FEC dongle to the target computer so that FEC will be licensed when launched.

5. Run FEC.exe from the flash drive. Once launched, you should see a notice in the title bar of the window that reads [PORTABLE MODE] as follows:

Important Note: The target computer where you will be running Forensic Email Collector needs to meet the minimum system requirements.

What is The Benefit of Portable Mode?

It has been possible to run FEC from a flash drive even without putting it in portable mode. However, this would cause FEC to create a small configuration file on the computer where it's run. Once switched to portable mode, FEC creates the configuration file on the flash drive instead of on the target computer—minimizing its footprint.