Invest now!

Whether you have purchased my ebook 'How to make $1000 a month from the Internet' and made some money from a side hustle for very little initial cost or you have some savings sitting in a bank account which is earning a paltry 0.7% interest at best (or 0.01% as some banks like Barclays and NatWest are offering - wow - thanks guys!) - why not invest it in stocks and shares?

Even if your savings are earning 2% a year, you are losing money when you take inflation and the rising cost of living into account!

Due to the Ukraine crisis, now is a perfect time to invest in the stock market as prices are low.

Introduction to ETFs

ETF screener to help you pick the right ones for you out of the 1000+ available.

I recommend a USA or Global ETF. For instance the SWDA ETF currently at 5925p (top global companies only) charges 0.2% annually and has almost tripled in value in 10 years (+75% in last 5 years). Quite a difference from the bank rate, isn't it?

As with all shares, the trick is to buy low.

Have you been 'jobfished' by Madbird&Co? You could be working for free!

The people on reputable job market sites like fiverr will agree to do a specific task for a specific price. Payment is made up front to fiverr by the customer so that you will always receive the agreed amount from fiverr on satisfactory completion of the work.

A recent BBC Radio 4 and BBC 3 TV program detailed a scammer who took advantage of the Covid lockdown to entice people to work for him from their own homes for up to 6 months for free (just empty promises). Although his company was registered at UK Companies house (something which anyone can do for less than £20), the company Madbird&Co. appears to comprise of just one man and a bedroom!

'Getting started with Ventoy v1.07' revised edition with extra info on booting ISOs from Partition 3

I have added an extra section to the chapter on booting from payloads that are situated on Partition 3 of a Ventoy USB drive. The examples included are for a Linux-based StorageCraft ISO and a Ubuntu 64-bit ISO and it uses the F6 Extended grub2 menu facility of Ventoy.

As usual, all my eBook updates are free - just use the link that was sent to you in the original Payhip purchase confirmation email.

Amazon Ventoy Kindle version.

Getting started with Ventoy (v1.07 - 2022-02-02)

Contents:
Chapter 1 - Introduction .. 5
Chapter 2 - Glossary of terms ... 6
Chapter 3 - Make a Ventoy multiboot USB drive .... 8
GPT or MBR? ... 8
Ventoy partitions .. 8
Is your USB drive larger than 128GiB? ...... 9
4K sector disks (Advanced Format Storage) ... 9
Typical Ventoy Legacy\MBR partition arrangement .. 11
Secure Boot ... 12
Using the Ventoy installer. 14
Beware of fake flash drives!...... 14
Recommended USB drives .. 14
Exercise 1: Make a Ventoy drive under Windows ...... 15
Troubleshooting Ventoy installation and updates ..... 15
Exercise 2: Make a Ventoy drive under Linux ...... 17
Re-format Partition 1. 19
Updating Ventoy ... 20
Chapter 4 - Using the Ventoy USB drive ... 21
Exercise 3: MBR-boot to the Ventoy menu... 22
Exercise 4: Add an Ubuntu ISO.. 24
Exercise 5: Add more Linux ISOs. 28
Chapter 5 - Using the Ventoy menu .. 29
Ventoy menu keys ..... 30
Ventoy Menu Function keys ... 31
Special Ventoy keys ... 31
Debug mode .... 33
Exercise 6: Grub2 mode ...... 34
Troubleshooting summary...... 36
Chapter 6 - Add more payload files... 37
Exercise 7: Add a Windows 10 Install ISO ..... 37
Exercise 8: Add the Parted Magic ISO..... 39
Exercise 9: Add PassMark's MemTest86 memory test ..... 40
Chapter 7 - Hide some files/folders from Ventoy ... 43
Chapter 8 - The Ventoy user configuration file (ventoy.json)... 45
Ventoy.json syntax rules: .... 46
JSON Syntax checker..... 48
VentoyPlugson. 48
Multimode. 54
Chapter 9 - Ubuntu with persistence ... 55
Exercise 10: Ubuntu 64-bit ISO with persistence ... 55
Exercise 11: Kali 64-bit ISO with persistence ... 63
Chapter 10 - Windows Installs using an XML file .. 65
Exercise 12: Install Windows 10 Professional onto any computer. 67
Exercise 13: Platform specific XML file ... 70
Chapter 11 - Install Windows 11 to systems with no TPM ... 72
Exercise 14: Install Windows 11 on old hardware...... 73
Chapter 12 - Add WinPE ISOs...... 77
Strelec WinPE ...... 77
Exercise 15: Add the Strelec WinPE ISO.. 78
Hirens Boot CD WinPE ...... 79
Exercise 16: Add HBCD_PE ISO.. 79
Other useful WinPE ISOs... 80
Chapter 13 - Add AntiVirus ISOs.. 81
Chapter 14 - Add Chrome OS ISOs (CloudReady and FydeOS) ... 82
CloudReady (UEFI64 only). 82
FydeOS ... 82
Chapter 15 - Add Windows .wim files (wimboot plugin).... 83
Exercise 17: Add support for booting .wim files... 83
Chapter 16 - Add Windows .VHD files (Win VHD plugin) .. 84
Exercise 18: Add support for .VHD files .. 84
Chapter 17 - Boot from other drives/partitions/files (grubfm) ... 85
Exercise 19: Add grubfm and boot ISOs from any drive or partition.... 85
Boot from Partition 3 using Ventoy...... 88
Exercise 20: Add StorageCraft Recovery Environment Cross Platform to Partition 3 ..... 88
Chapter 18 - Add rEFInd to UEFI-boot from any disk/partition ... 91
Exercise 21: Add rEFInd.img...... 91
Chapter 19 - Change the default Ventoy menu theme ...... 94
Exercise 22: Add a 'Seven-of-nine' theme..... 97
Exercise 23: Random themes .. 100
Exercise 24: How to make your own Ventoy theme ...... 101
Chapter 20 - Specify the exact menu entries (Image List plugin)... 102
Exercise 25: Exclude legacy-only ISO files in the UEFI menu. 102
Whitelist menu .... 105
Chapter 21 - Replace the menu filenames with text (Alias plugin)...... 106
Chapter 22 - How to display grub2 menu icons (Class plugin). 107
Chapter 23 - Display payload tips to the user (MenuTip plugin) ... 109
Chapter 24 - Add your own grub2 menus (Extension plugin). 112
Exercise 26: Make a simple ventoy_grub Extended menu ... 119
Chapter 25 - Auto-select Memdisk mode for some payloads (Auto-memdisk) ...... 121
Chapter 26 - Add passwords (Password plugin).. 122
Chapter 27 - Other Ventoy features. 124
Chapter 28 - How to recompile the Ventoy source code ... 125
Chapter 29 - Add Easy2Boot (Legacy) to Ventoy ... 126
Chapter 30 - Important BIOS bugs and features that you really need to know about! ... 129
Chapter 31 - Bootable devices (USB 3 devices are best!). 131
IODD Mini...... 132
Chapter 32 - So how does UEFI-booting actually work then? ... 133
UEFI booting...... 135
EFI Shell. 136
Chapter 33 - Secure Boot.... 137
About UEFI Security (PK, KEK, DB and DBX) .... 138
Platform Key (PK). 138
Key Exchange Key (KEK) .... 138
Whitelist Database (DB) .... 138
Blacklist Database (DBX) ... 139
Machine Owner Key (MOK)..... 139
How Secure Boot works.. 139
Secure Boot and Mok Manager... 140
How to disable Secure Boot .. 141
Chapter 34 - Grub2 configuration file syntax...... 143
Words .. 143
Reserved words. 143
Quoting ... 143
Variable expansion .. 143
Locale strings. 144
Comments... 144
Simple commands ... 144
Compound commands.... 144
Built-in Commands .. 145
Chapter 35 - grub2 troubleshooting. 146
Linux ISO boot issues ...... 147
Theme errors - 'alloc magic is broken'...... 147
Corrupt screen/bad screen resolution...... 147
Chapter 36 - Useful links..... 149

Quickly add Medicat 21.12 to Easy2Boot using a batch file

The current Medicat download is designed to make a Ventoy USB drive and you can just extract the contents of the large MediCat.USB.v21.12.7z onto your E2B USB drive and use 'Ventoy for Easy2Boot' to boot the files or agFM menu system.

However, if you want to use the payloads with the E2B menu system then you will need to extract each of the .iso and .wim files from the .7z package and individually copy them to the E2B menu folders (or use a .cmd script - see below).

eBook 'Getting started with Ventoy v1.06' is now available

 The 'Getting started with Ventoy' eBook has now been updated to version 1.06.

Since the new VentoyPlugson.exe configuration application will not recognise a standard Easy2Boot USB drive, if you want to use the new browser-based application to make or change your ventoy.json configuration file, you can only use it on an E2B USB drive if you first 'convert' the E2B USB drive to an 'official' Ventoy USB drive.

The VentoyPlugson web app is for configuring Ventoy.

The eBook now contains a new section on how to use the VentoyPlugson.exe application on an Easy2Boot USB drive.

All my eBook updates are free - just use the email link that was sent to you by Payhip when you made the original purchase.

Add rEFInd to Ventoy to allow you to UEFI64-boot from any file/partition/disk

I have added instructions here on how to add the rEFInd image file to agFM and/or Ventoy so that you can UEFI64-boot from any EFI file on any partition in the system (not just the Ventoy main USB partition).

Note that using the 'Install rEFInd' icon (dark blue square with down-arrow), you can install rEFInd onto any disk in the system.

agFM v1.76 released

This version just has a small bugfix to the batch file:
 \e2b\Update agFM\Make_Latest_ventoy_Partition_Image.cmd which makes the Ventoy images described see here. The old cmd file was downloading Ventoy 1.0.62 instead of 1.0.63.

To update agFM run \e2b\Update aFM\Download and update agFM_v2.cmd from partition 2 of your USB drive.

1.76 2021-12-28 – fix \e2b\Update agFM\Make_Latest_ventoy_Partition_Image.cmd so always downloads latest version.

E2B v2.11 released

 v2.11 is now released. It is the same as v2.11d Beta.

v2.11 2021-12-19

• Bugfix – file extension overrides xxxxxx_.isodef.iso not working in 2.10
• Add sample ReloadVentoy.mnu menu for when adding E2B to a Ventoy USB drive (and _ISO\docs\Sample mnu files\Ventoy\ventoy_grub.cfg file sample file for \ventoy folder)
• Update Launcher.exe, latest RMPartUSB.exe
• Update language strings
• Update .cmd files to use windows find.exe in all places in case user has changed Windows default path

Add E2B to your Ventoy USB drive

If you have switched over to using Ventoy as your main USB multiboot tool but you still need your trusty  E2B USB drive for some Legacy boot tasks such as to boot to DOS images, Legacy booting some Linux ISOs which Ventoy doesn't support, install Win98/Win2K/XP, auto-install Windows legacy with drivers+apps (SDI_CHOCO), run PassPass, etc. then why not add E2B to your Ventoy USB drive as well?

It is very easy to do and I have added a new page with instructions here.

Tip: Use E2B v2.14 or later.

Note that .imgPTN files are not supported when using a Ventoy USB drive.

Why not start a 'side-hustle' during the holidays?

Instead of watching your favourite box-set again during the holidays, why not use the time to set up a 'side-hustle' or two instead? With the Omicron virus around, you won't be going out much anyway...

Get this T-shirt here. Try the coupon code FINISHLINE and you may get 25% off this week!

So with a little bit of effort why not earn extra income from the internet. In many cases, this can be set up as a 'passive income' source - i.e. once you set it up, it will continue to earn you money for many years and you don't have to do anything else except count the money every month!

For instance, I set up a RedBubble 'shop' in just one day yesterday (and I have ZERO skills when it comes to graphics design as you can probably tell!). RedBubble will sell your designs for you. Your designs are printed onto a wide range of their products on demand and it costs nothing to start.

E2B sticker for your laptop/PC from as little as £1

E2B Classic Mug from £8-ish with coupon code.

Can you work out the message on my plain black T-shirt below (for maths geeks only - and it is for sale -  tip: try the coupon code FINISHLINE before Dec 8th and you may get 25% off!;-)?