Add Mepis antiX MX-15 with persistence to E2B

MX-15 ISOs can be booted straight from E2B - just copy the ISOs to the E2B drive (e.g. \_ISO\LINUX folder), make them contiguous (run \MAKE_THIS_DRIVE_CONTIGUOUS.cmd) and boot.

More Frettt's Themes for E2B (en & de)

It seems to be a 'Themes' week!

Frettt has sent me his latest English and German E2B themes which I have uploaded to the Alternate Downloads sites (Themes folder) as a .zip file.

You can view all 16 (8 English + 8 German) on the Gallery page on his site. Here is one of them (German version)...

Add TechUSB and tuxpe to E2B

TechUSB

This Knoppix-based product is sold by RepairTech. It is part of their TechSuite. YouTube video here (TechUSB starts here).

FYI - I have no connection or affiliation with them.

Their TechUSB_Creator.exe utility creates a bootable USB flash drive.

To add this to E2B, simply drag-and-drop the drive letter icon of the TechUSB flash drive onto the MPI_FAT32 desktop shortcut (after installing the MPI Tool Kit) - then make a TechUSB.imgPTN file.

Note: If you want to add personal storage, then increase the default size of the .imgPTN file by at least 200MB.

Laura's E2B themes

If you haven't visited Laura's site for a while (like me!), you will be pleasantly surprised to see she has added even more lovely E2B menu examples.

She has used both grub4dos and GFXBoot Menu themes for both her E2B menus and for the CSM menus inside .imgPTN files. No doubt they took quite a bit of work!

To cycle through the different menu screenshots, just click on one of the screenshots on her site and use the arrow markers.

You can download some of her themes here.

I have also slightly tweaked the T2-MAINMENU theme (the one which does not use GFXBoot) and uploaded it to the 'Themes' folder in the Alternate Download Area.

Laura's T2 MainMenu Theme (slightly-modified)

Note: Some of Laura's GFXBoot menus seem to overflow if you have too many menu items...

Laura has a 'Contact Me' form if you need (free) help and advice on making your own E2B themes, and she can speak English, Spanish and German.

P.S. Laura is working on a PDF which contains the easy2boot.com site information but written in German.

E2B v1.81a Beta available

I have uploaded E2B 1.81a. The changes are fairly minor:

• Alternate Power off sample .mnu file added for systems where F10 does not turn off the system.
• Change Admin detection test in MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE script so does not rely on a Windows exe file. 
• Improve MOVE_IMGPTN script.
• Improve windows install from ISO for XML path specification and check /autounattend.xml is not empty. Either full path or just the filename can be used to specify the XML file. Now updates Helper Flash drive (if present) with XML file contents.

The file is available in the Alternate Download Areas as usual.

Note: v1.81b has an extra bugfix in QRUN.ISO for .isoPE and .ISOPE01 file extension causing the LOADISOPE.cmd file to error.

www.easy2boot.com and the new Ezoic page layout

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the www.easy2boot.com domain is now routed through Ezoic.

These guys reformat the original site layout for me (for free) and add more AdSense and other adverts which increases the ad revenue that the site earns and this helps towards the site costs (due to the large bandwidth load, the E2B site costs me £200 a year and many people use AdBlock to block the adverts on the site).

Ezoic experiment with different site layouts to find the 'optimal' layout. So one person may see a different site layout from another person (try Chrome 'Incognito' and you will get a different layout!). The first time you load an easy2boot.com page from Ezoic, it stores a cookie in your computer's browser cookie folder so that you will always get the same format each time you visit the site.

10% of new users will receive the original site layout. This is so that Ezoic can compare the original site performance with the new layouts.

A few users (who don't use AdBlock - thanks!) have complained about the misleading ads (e.g. 'Download Now' buttons).

You can use AdBlock to stop the ads, but you will still get the same 'Ezoic' layout and you will not see the original page layout.

A few people have been generous by donating and I am very grateful to them. If the new site layout annoys you and if you have donated £5 or more (or have contributed in other ways), please contact me for instructions on how to view the original site pages which have less ads and the original page layout. 

Adding Lenovo Maintenance Utilities (IBM DOS-based) to E2B

Some Lenovo (ex-IBM) maintenance utilities make an IBM-DOS bootable USB flash drive.

These USB flash drives are formatted with a FAT12 volume which boots to IBM DR-DOS via IBMBIO.com. Typically, they are in floppy diskette format (i.e. no partition table).

Under grub4dos, it is possible to boot from a FAT12 drive using:

chainloader --pcdos /ibmbio.com

However, if you convert the Lenovo USB flash drive to a FAT32 .imgPTN file and try to boot from it using E2B, you will find that it does not boot. The reason for this is that, unfortunately, IBM DR-DOS does not seem to boot from a FAT32 volume.

The IBM DOS boot chain is:

IBMBIO.COM -> IBMDOS.COM -> COMMAND.COM

We can fix this by using FreeDOS boot files in the .imgPTN partition image or by making an image .IMA file...

SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 64GB for just £17 (UK)

If you are fed up waiting for your E2B USB stick to boot or for your large .ISO, .imgPTN or .VHD files to be copied across, why not treat yourself to one of these?

SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 - up to 245MB/s read speed and up to 190MB/s write speed. I have recommended these drives for about 2 years now and they routinely come out top in most USB Flash drive reviews for speed+value.

The cheapest I have found is from Tesco Direct here for £17 (+£3 P&P). Note: Looks like the price has now gone up to £22!!!

Note that very old versions of this drive were of the 'Fixed Disk' type, but all versions for the last year or so should be of the 'Removable' type.

Download official Microsoft Windows ISOs

I just saw an article on Dave's Computer Tips about a utility that will download official MS Windows Install ISOs + Office. Looks very handy! Why not subscribe too whilst you are there...

Note: 'English'  = American (USA)
          'English International' = English (UK)   !!!

Add Anvi Rescue Disk, Sophos Bootable AV, Trend Micro AV and Panda AV to your E2B drive

Note: None of the AV utilities below contain EFI boot files.

Anvi Rescue Disk 11

This is a free 100MB download from AnviSoft here. It supports several languages (see screenshot below).