E2B v1.60 Beta6 now available

• New grub4dos (fixes minor issue of cursor left on screen when p for password is pressed)
• wimboot file added

Unless anyone reports a problem, this version will be made the 'release' version 1.60 in a day or so.

(click Alternate Download Areas links on http://www.easy2boot.com/download/  for the download)

I have added a sample 'Boot from WIM file.mnu' file to the \_ISO\docs\Sample mnu files folder:

# Boot from an image inside a .WIM file (useful for self-contained WinPE - e.g. MSDaRT)
# extract files from a WinPE ISO to a folder on the E2B drive (do not place files in a \_ISO\XXX folder)
# set FOLDER value below - check location of boot.wim and other files are correct (else 0xc000000f error)
# Some files and folders may not be required and can be deleted

title WinPE boot from WIM\n Boot from a .wim file
set FOLDER=/MSDART
kernel /%grub%/wimboot index=2
initrd @bcd=%FOLDER%/boot/bcd @boot.sdi=%FOLDER%/boot/boot.sdi @bootmgr=%FOLDER%/bootmgr @boot.wim=%FOLDER%/sources/boot.wim

New wimboot feature for experimental purposes:

This allows you to boot from any image inside a .wim file. You could, for instance, make a large .wim file containing lots of WinPE (MSDaRT ??) OS's and boot from any one of them by using a different index value.

Note that this cannot be used for lots of different Windows Installs because the install,wim file will not be found unless you ensure it is in the \sources folder on the E2B drive (or if using a E2B hard disk, it can be on a different partition).

If you wish, all the files could be placed in a single folder and the paths altered to match - e.g.:

title WinPE boot from WIM\n Boot from a .wim file
set FOLDER=/MSDART
kernel /%grub%/wimboot index=2
initrd @bcd=%FOLDER%/bcd @boot.sdi=%FOLDER%/boot.sdi @bootmgr=%FOLDER%/bootmgr @boot.wim=%FOLDER%/boot.wim

Note: Don't be tempted to put the files in a \_ISO menu folder (e.g. \_ISO\WIN\MSDART) because E2B will enumerate all the extra files which will slow down the appearance of the menu a lot!

The new grub4dos also means we can access files inside an initrd file - e.g.

map /inirtd.gz (rd)
ls (rd) /

This may be useful for patching bytes in a linux file (e.g. script file) to modify the boot behaviour of an initrd file inside a .iso file without needing to unzip-patch-remake-rezip the initrd file and then re-make the ISO file.