agFM v1.81 released plus E2B Beta v2.14h (with DLC Boot 2022 v4.0/4.1 ISO support)

agFM v1.81 is now released and supports the latest DLC Boot 2022 ISO.

E2B v2.14i Beta and v2.15 is also available which also supports the June 2022 DLC ISO and has UDF ISO bugfix in grub4dos.

For DLCBoot 2022 ISO UEFI64 booting from agFM please use agFM v1.88 or later.

Procedure

1. Download the E2B 2.14h beta from one of the two Alternate Download sites - extract the files to a new folder and run Make_E2B.exe from the new folder - then click the Update E2B Drive button. It should update the E2B files and then download the new agFM v1.81. Ventoy for Easy2Boot (v1.0.57) has not changed, so you can skip the Ventoy update if you wish.

2. Download the DLC Boot 2022 rar file from dlcboot.com using the Mega.nz download link (the others don't seem to work?). Extract the contents to a new folder on your Windows office system.

To make and ISO file (method not recommended) - run DLCBoot.exe as Admin. Now click on the CD icon (top bar - right hand side) to make an ISO file and then quit the application. Note: make sure the new ISO is approx. 5GB - sometimes the ISO seems to be corrupt and is far too small - if so, just repeat the process.

If you have a program which can make an ISO file, instead of using the DLCBoot.exe to make the ISO, I recommend that you simply make a non-UDF ISO from the extracted .rar files. The file 'DLCBoot.exe' should be in the 'root' (top level) of the ISO and the folders such as \DLC1, etc. should also be at the top level. Use PowerISO or WinISO or a similar program but make sure it makes a non-UDF file.

Note: Due to a bug in grub4dos with large UDF ISO files, Easy2Boot may not be able to list the wim files if the ISO is in UDF format. To fix this you will need to make or remake the ISO file (using PowerISO or ISOWin perhaps) but make sure you save the new ISO as non-UDF (e.g. ISO9660+Joliet+RockRidge). See here. This was fixed in E2B v2.14i and later versions.

3. Copy the new DLC .iso file to a suitable menu folder on the E2B USB drive, e.g. \_ISO\WINPE.

4. Rename the file so that it has a _.isowin.iso file extension (e.g. DLCBoot2022V4_.isowin.iso). The filename can have spaces if you wish.

5. Run the \Make_This_Drive_Contiguous.cmd from the USB drive to make the new ISO file contiguous.

You should now be able to boot to the Win10 32-bit, Win10 64-bit and Win11 64-bit WinPE versions (depending on legacy\UEFI and bitness of your CPU) from either E2B (legacy) or agFM (legacy or UEFI).

Note that the DLC Desktop will initialise twice - so wait for it to finish.

Tip: If E2B does not list the .wim files due to the UDF bug in grub4dos, then load the agFM menu system from the Main Menu of E2B and then select the DLC ISO file.

Many thanks to a1ive (grubfm project) who supplied a new version of wimboot for use with grub4dos which now supports XPRESS-compressed .wim files (as used in DLC Boot). The official iPXE wimboot project will hopefully be releasing a new version of wimboot with XPRESS support soon.

The new wimboot may also solve some E2B issues when booting some other 'oddball' WinPE ISOs too.

agFM 1.82 fixes an issue when booting non-Windows VHDs and .IMG files. E2B v2.14h adds support for the same types by using a _.vhdhdd.vhd file extension.