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.

About E2B v1.A7g and using the 2nd partition on the E2B drive for payload files

If you have a large (>128GiB) USB hard disk, I recommend that you use the first partition (up to 128GiB in size) for E2B and use the second partition for other purposes such as for storing utilities, hard disk backups, documents, etc. Note that only  recent versions of Windows 10 (1703+) can access the 2nd partition if it is on a Removable (flash) drive.

However, you can place most payloads such as linux .ISO files, Windows VHD files, etc. on the second partition and add the PTN2_MNU.mnu menu file to one of the menu folders (e.g. add it to \_ISO\MAINMENU). The PTN2_MNU.mnu will take you to a sub-menu where all the files in the folder on the second partition will be listed and you can then boot to any one of them.

Note: Windows VHD files will only boot from partition 2 on a Removable USB drive if the VHD contains Windows 10 1703 or later. However, there should be no restriction if the USB is a hard disk.

The 128GiB USB BIOS bug
Note that due to some BIOSes (e.g. Asus EeePC's) having a bug in their USB driver, they are not able to access files past 128GiB on the USB drive. This bug is quite common, especially on older USB 2.0 only systems. This means that grub4dos will not be able to access the file if it has a sector address higher than 128GiB on the disk. This is why I suggest you do not use a USB drive larger than 128GiB - or at least keep the E2B partition below 128GiB in size.

If the file is beyond 128GiB on the drive (e.g. in a 2nd partition on a >128GiB USB drive) then grub4dos may be unable to access it.

E2B will warn you if the BIOS has this 128GiB bug as soon as it starts to load.

Sometimes, you can fix the BIOS bug by loading the grub4dos USB 2.0 driver which replaces the buggy BIOS driver (hold down the SHIFT key just as E2B starts to boot to load the grub4dos USB driver). However, the grub4dos USB 2.0 driver only works on older USB 2.0 systems and not with newer chipsets or USB 3.0.

Tip: If your system has this BIOS bug but does not have any USB 2.0 ports and you have a USB 3.0 E2B drive, then connect the E2B drive to a USB 3.0 port using a USB 2.0 cable - this may allow the grub4dos USB 2.0 driver to work because it will use the USB 2.0 connections instead of the USB 3.0 set of contacts.

Windows ISOs
You may have noticed that I said that you can place most payloads on the second partition - well  Windows Install ISOs were an exception, but not now!

I have tweaked E2B v1.A7g so that you can, if you wish, add Windows Install ISOs onto the second partition (all types of Windows ISOs - except XP ISOs).

Here is how the 'cheat' works...