E2B v1.A8a Beta available

Booting Windows install ISOs no longer requires an extra WinHelper USB flash drive!

If your E2B USB drive was a 'fixed disk' then previous versions of E2B required you to also connect a WinHelper USB Flash drive to the system because on all versions of Windows NT6 (Vista to Win10 1609) the \AutoUnattend.xml file had to be on a 'Removable' USB drive in order for Windows Setup to detect and use the XML file.

The alternative was to convert the ISO to a .imgPTN file.

This new version of E2B uses 'wimboot' which is part of the open source iPXE project here.

Add Manjaro Live UEFI-64 to E2B

If you convert a Manjaro ISO using MPI_FAT32 (MakePartImage) the resulting .imgPTN will not MBR or UEFI boot.

The grub2 EFI boot file included with Manjaro, only seems to support the CD iso9660 file system and does not understand FAT32 filesystems.

If you use Rufus, you must use the 'dd' raw copy option and not the UEFI FAT32 or GPT options.

To fix this, find a Ubuntu or Mint x64 Live CD ISO file, and...

1. Switch the Manjaro.imgPTN file on the E2B USB drive so that the \EFI\BOOT folder is visible in Explorer.

2. Use 7Zip or some other program to extract the two EFI\BOOT\*.EFI files from the Ubuntu ISO.

3. Copy the two files into the \EFI\BOOT folder on the E2B drive.

4. For CSM Legacy booting, add these 4 lines to the end of the \menu.lst file (see \boot\grub\tz and the \boot\grub\locales\keyboards file for your country codes - e.g. en_US New_York us).

title Manjaro x64\n Manjaro Live

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-x86_64 misobasedir=manjaro misolabel=EASY2BOOT systemd.show_status=1 lang=en_GB tz=London keytable=gb

initrd /boot/amd_ucode.img /boot/intel_ucode.img /boot/initramfs-x86_64.img

boot

Merry Christmas!

To those who celebrate Xmas, have a good day

E2B eBook - special Xmas offer!

Christmas day and it's 3 p.m. - so you've opened all your presents, uncle Fred is snoring his head off (and you are vaguely wondering how he had any room for Turkey after having consumed so much sherry, wine and port), auntie Doris is making the room virtually uninhabitable due to eating too many Brussels sprouts and Dad is tactfully blaming the dog for the awful smells!

Everyone else is watching 'Suits' on Netflix (though Meghan Markle maybe worth watching again for the tenth time this year).

You will have to wait hours for the batteries of your new Xmas present, a 'Gatwick special' drone, to charge up before you can try it out over nearby Heathrow airport... and you are feeling very bored.

Well now is a perfect time to get to know how to use E2B properly. Why not add some DOS games, add a bootable version of KODI (OpenElec) or play 100's of retro games using your old USB games controllers (LAKKA) or boot to a full Windows 10 installation (WinToGo).

So, just for this Christmas period only, I have reduced the price of the E2B eBook How to make a multiboot USB drive using Easy2Boot to just $5 (but you can give more if you want to ;-) ).

Merry Christmas!

Steve

How was the Raspberry Pi made for only $35?

Having a background in PC design and test s/w, I found this ZDNET article interesting.

E2B v1.A7 now released

This new version is available from the Alternate Download Areas now (download link for OneDrive here).

It will be uploaded to the E2B website in a day or two.

E2B v1.A7 (changes from v1.A6):

E2B v1.A7h Beta with Server 2019 support added

E2B v1.A7h Beta now has an extra folder added for Windows Server 2019 ISOs and .imgPTN files.

The Beta is available from the Alternate Download Areas as usual.

Please let me know if you find any issues. I hope to release v1.A7 before Christmas.

So if anything requires tweaking, now is the time to tell me!

Add COMSS Russian/English AV+Utilities Boot Disk to E2B

The COMSS boot disk comss_boot_usb_2018_07.iso  does not seem to be bootable as a .ISO file, so I converted it to a FAT32 .imgPTN file and used Syslinux v6.03 (603) when prompted by MakePartImage.

Once the .imgPTN was switched to, in order to get F-Secure to boot, I also needed to rename the
\boot\iso\rescue-cd-3.16-73600\boot\isolinux folder  to...
\boot\iso\rescue-cd-3.16-73600\boot\syslinux.

Once that was done, most of the menu items seemed to work as expected.

Endless OS - an easy-to-use Linux-based OS for schools, businesses and everyone!

I just came across Endless OS. It seems to be very easy to use and install apps onto - you would hardly know it was Linux-based!

I downloaded the Basic ISO (eos-eos3.5-amd64-amd64.181116-185419.base.iso 1.8GB) and it boots fine on E2B as a LiveCD.

Booting from a .ISO file + persistence does not seem to be available, so when booting from the ISO as a LiveCD you will not be able to install any large apps, etc. so you may want the 'full' version, however even the Basic version seems quite useful.

MPI Tool Kit v0.088 available

v0.088 2018-12-05

• Add syslinux v6.03 option
• Default to syslinux v4 instead of v3
• Now uses 7z.exe instead of the 7zg GUI for unpacking (doesn't stop if 'extra data found' warning and seems to be faster)
• Menu.lst updated and some small bugs fixed plus options to disable some menu entries
• User can now add their own menu.lst file if using a GFX menu file
• Forcibly auto-dismounts the .imgPTN file after a small delay
• Sample MyCSM files updated
• Bugfix in menu.lst for text mode MyCSM.cfg menu heading/footer to be displayed
• Try to fix timing issue as occasionally can get 'access denied' errors when running LREPLACE.cmd and ssed.exe.

This new versions has had quite a few changes but should be faster and more reliable.

Please let me know if you find any issues.

Is your laptop running slow ever since you bought a replacement AC power adapter for it?

Did you know that some AC power adapter connectors for laptops have a 'smart' pin?
If this pin does not carry the correct voltage or signal, your notebook will run very slowly.