Sunday 21 May 2017

Add Webconverger to E2B

Webconverger is a professional Kiosk Browser which you can run from a LiveCD ISO or as an installed OS on a hard disk or USB drive (it is based on Debian and FireFox). It can also be configured as a 'signage' panel.

Kai Hendy of Webconverger offers a 30-day free trial which is needed if you want to make use of the 'control-panel' configuration features (though it seemed to mostly work without subscription for me).

Kai Hendy tells me:
The way it works is once your credit card is provided, you have a 30 day
free trial. So no deductions are made if you want to experiment for a
month. If there is a charge on a test machine, I can refund it, don't
worry.
For those customers, if they want to cancel for any reason, I offer a 30
day money back guarantee.

The online configuration form can control many machines
all registered to the same email account.

Once a machine is 'subscribed', all remote control-panel seemed to work well and as expected, although for some changes, a reboot was required.

If your E2B USB drive is a Removable drive (e.g. most USB Flash drives) then you can just directly boot from it as an .iso file from E2B (or use .isodefault to suppress the suggestion messages). You can enter the email address that you can also use for your subscription.

However, if your E2B USB drive is of the Fixed-disk type (e.g. USB HDD) then it will not boot directly from the ISO because the pre-defined linux boot parameters include the cheat code bootfrom=removable so that it will only boot from removable media.

A simple way to remove the bootfrom=removable code is...

Add Lenovo diagnostics and BIOS Updates to E2B

The linux bootable Lenovo Diagnostics ISOs can simply be copied to any E2B menu folder (e.g. \_ISO\UTILITIES). The diagnostics will only run on Lenovo-branded systems.



The linux-bootable-cd-41308857.iso is also UEFI 64-bit bootable.

Install the E2B MPI Tool Kit and then drag-and-drop the ISO onto the Windows MPI_FAT32 shortcut (I suggest you rename the ISO first because the CSM menu title has the same name as the ISO file).


Lenovo also supply UEFI-bootable versions of their diagnostics (see below).

Saturday 20 May 2017

Hit by WannaCry? There is a decryptor now for XP and Win7.

If you or one of your users have a Windows XP or Windows 7 system and have been hit by the WannaCry ransomware virus, do not despair!


The first thing to do is to warn all users that if they are hit (and their systems are Win7 or XP),

do NOT turn off the system - do NOT reboot it - do not use it - just leave it alone!

The next thing to do is (as quickly as possible) download the decrypting software wanakiwi.exe onto a USB stick (don't use the infected system!), plug it in to the affected system and run it.

If possible, it would be better to make sure every computer had a copy of wanakiwi.exe already on their hard disk because connecting a USB drive may destroy the keys which are left in memory.

More info and an animated GIF of it in action on Windows XP and Windows7 here.

Although this has been demonstrated on a freshly infected system and wanakiwi was run as soon as the ransomware had completed encryption, I am not sure if any cases have been reported yet of wanawiki successfully working in a real life situation...

Can't boot to Windows but need some important files?


Scenario

  • You are given a Windows computer which will not boot to Windows any more.
  • You have tried to boot to Recovery Media/ISO and repair it, but it did not work.
  • The NTFS filesystem and memory seem to be OK (you ran memory test and chkdsk).
  • The issue seems to be that the Windows OS is broken.
  • The internal hard disk is pretty full, so you cannot install a second copy of Windows as there is not enough free file space.
  • The customer wants only a small number of certain important files recovered from the hard disk, but he doesn't know exactly where they were stored. The customer does remember a bit of the file name as does know that he used MS Word to edit the documents.
Your Mission (should you decide to accept it), is to backup those important files to an offline USB drive before you start messing around with the customers OS or the files on his hard disk.

Discussion

At this point, you could decide to take an image of the internal hard disk using any decent backup package. This is a very sensible thing to do, but it will take a while.

Friday 19 May 2017

Install proxmox v4 from E2B

After a LOT of problems, I have managed to work out how to install the later versions of proxmox from E2B direct from the ISO file.

You will need to make a .mnu file.

See the bottom of this old post for details.

Thursday 18 May 2017

Wednesday 17 May 2017

Add a BitLocker encrypted Windows 10 To Go OS to Easy2Boot

Windows 10 1703 (Build 15063) or later will mount all formatted partitions of a USB Removable media Flash drive.

This means we can not only boot from a flat-file installation of Windows 10 now, but because we can create a multi-partition USB flash drive, we can also encrypt the Windows volume using BitLocker.

Windows 10 will allow us to MBR-boot (not UEFI-boot) to an encrypted volume either by entering a short password (e.g. 8 characters or more) or by inserting a USB flash drive containing a .BEK key file for the encrypted volume.

Monday 15 May 2017

E2B v1.92l and MPI Tool Pack 074 now available

I am hoping to release this as v1.92 Full Release version in a few days!

Includes latest grub4dos 0.4.6a (hopefully with all bugs fixed!).

MPI v0.074 has improved detection of the isolinux version.

Alternate OneDrive Download Area

Saturday 13 May 2017

Adding the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key to E2B

The HP Vision Diagnostics ISO can be added to an E2B Removable USB drive if you use the .ISOPE01 file extension. It will boot straight to WinPE and you should briefly see the blue console shell window which will load the ISO as a virtual drive and allow it to find the drivers and diagnostic programs inside the ISO.

If you have a E2B HDD, you will need to convert the ISO to a FAT32 .imgPTN file (or if you boot it as .isoPE01, you could use the SHIFT+F10 key and run \_ISO\e2b\firadisk\LoadISONP.cmd from the E2B USB drive to load the ISO file as a virtual DVD to allow the diagnostic files to be seen).

The HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key software however, does not come as an ISO file.

Here is how to add it (or the Vision Diagnostics ISO) to E2B.

Friday 12 May 2017

Add DLC Boot 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022 to E2B

'DLC Boot 2016 v3.2' .rar file (Build 160727) can be downloaded from the official dlcboot.com site.
As it contains copies of Windows and other licensed utilities, you should ensure you have the appropriate licences (or morals) before you use it however!

DLC2019 video with download links.

See end of page for DLCBoot 2022 .imgPTN instructions.

After unpacking the .rar file, you can run DLCBoot.exe from Windows as Administrator to either create a new bootable USB flash drive (use FAT32 for UEFI x64 booting) or a bootable ISO file or run any of the tools directly.

Run as Admin and click the CD icon to make an .ISO file