E2B v1.78d Beta available for testing!

The new animation and graphics features in the latest grub4dos version is still not quite fully working (the hotkey utility prevents the infinite-cycle animated GIF-on-menu feature from working), but can at least play a sequence of bitmaps smoothly (and with a transparent background if desired!) before the menu is loaded. You can also define up to 4 STAMPn variables to over-stamp your wallpaper with up to four different 'stamps'. It will also be possible to use different stamps for each menu - for instance, when the AntiVirus menu is loaded, it could show the same background but with an AV logo in the corner of the screen instead of the Main Menu logo. I will detail how to do this later.

Graphics mode + plain background

Also, the MYWBMP variable now can be used to define a pure colour background instead of a bitmap or JPEG file. The value must begin with 0x (zero + lower case x) to be recognised as an RGB fill colour (e.g. 0xFF0000 would be red).

set GMODE=800
# set a plain colour background
set MYWBMP=0xCC77EE

Use the 'Quick800' template - for quicker loading.

Improved Plop! Boot ISO

The Plop! boot ISO allows you to boot from a CD and then boot from a USB drive. This is useful if the BIOS does not support USB booting or has buggy USB-boot support (e.g. if the BIOS tries to boot from the USB drive as a USB-Floppy or USB-ZIP drive).

Make a UEFI-bootable .imgPTN file from a Toshiba BIOS update ISO file

Toshiba BIOS update ISOs can be booted from Easy2Boot in MBR\CSM mode. They typically boot to a DOS hard disk image.

Installing Windows 10 on old Windows 7 tablet

I had an old Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit tablet with 32GB internal flash memory and 2GB of RAM. It had an OEM Windows 7 Certificate of Authentication label (COA) on the back and so I decided to see if I could upgrade it to Windows 10.

As I did not have the latest Windows 10 Threshold 2 (1511) Home install ISO, I used the Windows 10 release version and installed it using an E2B flash drive (I did a clean install and completely erased all previous partitions).

I first installed Windows 10 without using a Product Key, then ran Windows Update to update it to the 1511 TH2 version. Then it was simply a case of using the Windows 7 Product Key from the COA label to activate it and Voila! I now have an activated Win 10 tablet.

With hindsight, it would have been much quicker to download Win10 Home TH2 from MS as the update took ages!

As this tablet is quite old, I am not sure if the COA label Product Key was ever registered with MS (originally it would have used the OEM Product Key embedded in the OEM OS). So I cannot be sure that it only worked because it had been previously activated with the  COA key.

Windows 10 July 2016 upgrade deadline

Even if you don't want to use Windows 10 just yet, remember to install Windows 10 TH2 on any old PCs, tablets, laptops, etc. that you have before the July 2016 free upgrade deadline. Once the system is activated, you can re-install it with any OS you like, but it will be registered for Windows 10 for any future Win10 install.

You can upgrade Home/Core editions of Win7/8 to Win 10 Home or Pro/business editions to Win 10 Pro.

If you don't want to install Windows 10 onto each system, why not install Windows 10 1511 Home and/or Pro to VHDs on a USB hard disk using WinToUSB, and boot each system from the USB hard disk.

Once you have the VHD booting, you can copy it to your E2B drive and have 32-bit and 64-bit VHDs for Win 10 Home and Pro. For UEFI-only systems, you will need to make .imgPTN files.

You should then be able to activate Windows using the original Product Key that is on each system, but using the same VHD each time (if you boot it on a different system it will just complain that it is not activated).

See here and here for details.

E2B v1.77A (with new TXT_Maker.exe)

The \_ISO\TXT_Maker.exe utility required a vb6 runtime comgdlg32,ocx file and so gave an error if it was run on a system without this ActiveX component registered.
This has now been fixed with TXT_Maker v1.0.08.
E2B v1.77A has this new version of TXT_Maker. Other than that, E2B v1.77A is the same as v1.77.
Thanks to Simon L for reporting it!

E2B v1.78b with Russian language

Yuri has sent me the Russian translation files for E2B, so now you can have E2B in Russian too if you update to the new v1.78b Beta version!

Let me know if you spot any problems.

To use the Russian language files, in your \_ISO\MyE2B.cfg file, use

if not exist LANG set LANG=RUSSIAN

grub4dos with animated bitmaps

Yaya has added support for animated bitmaps to the latest version of grub4dos 0.4.6a.

It allows you to display a sequence of bitmaps (e.g. pic01.bmp, pic02.bmp, etc.)

E2B v1.77 released

• New version of grubinst.exe
• MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE.cmd bugfixes for Removable drive detection and XP Home
• Switch_E2B v1.0.10
• E2B_Editor v1.0.83
• New \_ISO\TXT_Maker.exe utility
• MOVE_IMGPTN added (see here - Method 4). 
• If drive is write-protected, now uses ISOBOOT to boot from ISOs.
• Ophcrack support added to ISOBOOT. 
• QRUN.g4b warns if xxxx.imPTN file does not precede the second xxxx image partition file (no extension) when switching in two partition images. 
• Menu system will now ignore .exe files. 
• Improve QRUN.g4b when error and if E2B disk is not disk 0. 
• Change all STRINGS.txt menu headings so they don't start with two spaces (users should use HEADPOS in MyE2B.cfg if they want to move the headings). 
• New Sample mnu files - Q4OS+persistence, openSUSE, AltLinux, WIN98_IMGPTN_INST.mnu, Panda Vaccine AUTORUN.INF fix, redir/redirp and AVG Rescue

MPI Tool Pack v0.062 also available.

Google Drive download area

OneDrive download area

Boot openSUSE ISOs from E2B

openSUSE is rather strange in that it will not boot on E2B directly from the ISO.

Note: TumbleWeed ISOs do 'just work' as an ISO! For some commands (e.g. gparted) you may first need to run  "su -"  to get root level access and then type the command on the terminal command line!

Note: There are two types - all 'Installer' ISOs and 'LiveCD' ISOs.

Also RescueCD.

However there is a solution which depends on what type of E2B partition you have:

Q4OS with persistence on E2B

Q4OS is a rather nice, clean debian-based linux OS. The LiveCD ISO will boot directly from E2B.