Easy2Boot V1 - BETA16 available

If you rarely change the contents of the Easy2Boot USB drive, you can enable FASTLOAD to greatly speed up the loading of the first Main menu.

The download is here.

To turn on FASTLOAD cacheing, rename the file \FASTLOAD.NO to \FASTLOAD.YES

When you do this and reboot, the Main Menu will be cached (into \grub\FASTLOAD.MNU). From then on the cached Main menu will be used every time you boot. So if you add any more ISO files or change the payload or .mnu files on the USB drive in the \_ISO\MainMenu folder you will need to refresh the menu.
To Refresh the menu cache, choose the last menu item in the main menu (see screenshot) and it will reboot and refresh the cache.

This means that for everyday use, the Easy2Boot drive will boot much more quickly, but you do need to remember to Refresh the drive whenever you change the contents.
The Menu title will have 'FASTLOAD' after the version to indicate that you are in FASTLOAD cacheing mode.
To disable the mode, rename \FASTLOAD.YES to \FASTLOAD.NO.

P.S. Also added a persistent kali .mnu file in the \docs folder so you can boot from Kali direct from ISO with persistence.

• I have made a few tweaks to improve speed - before it took 24 seconds to boot to the main menu with over 30 payload files, now it takes 22 seconds! Please re-download  BETA16  v2 or later.
• .isogz support added in BETA16 v3  (13 April 2013  11:16 in Tutorial 72a) v3
• small fix for FASTLOAD added to version again and again! - see BETA16 v4!
• Added support for defining Heading colour in \grub\menu.lst - v5
• Bugfix - please update to v6!

Easy2Boot V1 - BETA15 released

• Improved the Windows Install menus. 
• Added support for XP Pro Volume licence and XP Enterprise ISOs. 
• Vista/7/SVR2K8R2/8/SVR2012 now can have any number of ISOs and you can type in the name of the ISO you want.
• Tutorial 72a has been updated.

Easy2Boot V1 - BETA14

now has new extension of .isowinvH  for Hirens boot ISOs.

Easy2Boot V1 BETA13 - keyboard mapping adding to support non-US keyboards

You can now add a grub4dos batch file to change the keyboard mapping to work with UK, German, French, AZERTY, QWERTZ or Japanese 106 keyboards. Simply copy one of the KBD_xxxxxx.g4b files in the grub folder to make a file called KBD.g4b and it will be used to change the key code mapping.
If you find any probkems with the mapping or have new mappings, please let me know (or better yet, send me your own working KBD_xxx.g4b file!).

Easy2Boot V1 BETA11 now available

The various Linux folders needed to be Linux (capital L) and not LINUX (all uppercase) to match the .mnu files. New .mnu files added to support persistence with some linux ISOs.
Click here for the new version.

It has a demo of how to add various DOS floppy images, linux isos, ERDCommander, KonBoot floppy image, plop iso, Norton Ghost iso, BartPE ISOs, StartOS ISO with persistence, Full Monty from ISO with persistence and BackTrack 5 from ISO with persistence - all on the same USB drive (plus, of course, any Windows install ISOs and linux ISOs that you have room for!).

I have made some small changes to BETA10 so that you can use an iso or folder with spaces in the name. The download link is here. As there are only small changes it is still called BETA10 but is version 3.

Easy2Boot BETA10 now available

I have changed the folder structure and function yet again!  You can now place almost any payload file (not just .ISO files!) in certain folders and they will be automatically listed in the menu and run according to their file extension.

\_ISO\MAINMENU - holds payload and mnu files that will be listed in the main (first) menu
\_ISO\AUTO - holds payload files that are listed by the AUTO menu
\_ISO\MNU - holds those payload that need mnu files and that are difficult to boot directly
\_ISO\WINDOWS - holds Windows installation ISOs

This menu shows the file ERDCommander.isowinv  - the .iso extension has been changed to .isowinv so that WinVBlock will be loaded as a floppy disk image at the same time as the ISO is loaded as a CD. This allows ERDCommander to boot successfully.

A list of extensions that are recognised by Easy2Boot can be found on the Tutorial page.

Take a look at the file \grub\QRUN.g4b to see what actions will be used for each type of file extension.

Let me know if any are missing...


For item 7, I added a MEMTEST.txt file containing the text:
title MEMTEST using MAINMENU\\UTILITY\n Run MEMTEST from %MFOLDER%/UTILITY/MEMTEST.IMG
so that this line is used as the title line instead of just the name of the payload file (MEMTEST.img).

Easy2Boot BETA09 now available

This new version adds a new Quick Test menu item. It can be removed by simply deleting the \mainmenu\qtest.mnu file if you don't want it.
The MainMenu folder allows you to drop only ISO files in, but the QTEST folder allows you to drop any type of file in it (including ISO files) and test it.
If you have a file (bin,ima,zip,img,gz etc) that you want to quickly test, just copy it into the \QTEST folder.
It will be listed by the Quick Test menu option and then executed according to it's file extension.
This allows you to quickly test all types of executable self-boot files without needing to add a grub4dos menu. For more details, see here.

If you wish, you can modify what file extensions are recognised and what grub4dos commands are used on each type by editing the \grub\qtest.g4b file.  For example:


:.bin
kernel (bd)/QTEST/%1 
exit

is the code that will execute on any .bin file. If you want to add another extension type (e.g. .binss), simply add another entry - e.g.


:.binss
echo This is my special version && pause
kernel (bd)/QTEST/%1 
exit

RMPrepUSB 2.1.664 available

This new version has extra options to install a Bootmgr or Ntldr bootloader to a FAT32 or NTFS partition. You can also install an MS-DOS bootloader to a FAT16 partition (but not FAT32). It uses RMBootSect.exe which is also a vb6 program.

Easy2Boot v1 BETA08 available

BETA08 now available. A few changes:

• new grldr and wenv
• does not re-count all Windows iso files every time you go back to the main menu thus making the loading of the main menu slightly faster when going back to it 
• You can now use a USB hard disk to install windows direct from windows isos - IF you also connect a USB flash drive with two files on it. 
• Black console background used instead of brown 
• Help doc changed to html and reduced (main doc now on RMPrepUSB site Easy2Boot V1 page.) 
• When asking for name of Windows ISO, you must now type in the full filename (i.e. with the .iso extension) 

Has anyone tested any Windows 8/2012 install ISOs yet?