Steve's blog about RMPrepUSB, Easy2Boot and USB booting and sometimes other stuff too!
Visit www.rmprepusb.com for over 140 Tutorials on USB booting or www.easy2boot.xyz for a unique USB multiboot solution.
Drag-and-drop the zip file onto the \e2b\Update e2b\Add_Ventoy.cmd file.
After installing it using that .cmd file, you will need to download the v1.0.29 patched version of core.img from here and overwrite the \ventoy\core.img file with this new version - otherwise MBR-booting will be blocked.
I have not changed its appearance, so please don't report any problems to the Ventoy forum unless you can reproduce the same issue on a genuine Ventoy USB drive!
The MBR version appears to say 'Unofficial Ventoy' but the UEFI version does not display that text message.
This version is temporary and for Beta testing only. I do not intend to maintain a forked version of Ventoy for E2B.
LongPanda (the developer of Ventoy) has changed Ventoy so that it will only work on MBR-partitioned disks if that disk was prepared using the official Ventoy tools. The second partition must be exactly 65536 sectors long now.
Recently, I received some special error reports, which finally proved to be the cause of the non-standard Ventoy environment. Especially use Ventoy in a single partition environment. Although Ventoy displays Unofficial's label information, users will not care and will still think it is a Ventoy problem.
Ventoy has been an overall design from the beginning, and has not considered integration into other bootloader or partition environments.
Ventoy's verification and subsequent development of new features will not consider this non-standard usage.
Therefore, I decided to prohibit the use of Ventoy in a non-standard environment and no longer accept requests for deregulation.
Of course, this is just the default behavior of Ventoy. Ventoy is still 100% open source. If you want to apply Ventoy in your own environment, you can fork a branch and modify the source code implementation.
This means that v1.0.28 (and all future versions?) will not run from an E2B drive.
If you would like to be able to continue to add Ventoy to E2B, please feel free to contact LongPanda and request that he changes his mind!
For now you need to use 1.0.27 (see here for details).
For the changes in Ventoy which check the partitions for validity - see the new code here (starting line 509).
If you wish, you can run the newer versions of Ventoy using MBR-booting only by using an older version of core.img, however UEFI-booting to Ventoy will still be blocked.
Footnote (2021): I have now recompiled Ventoy as 'Ventoy for Easy2Boot' with the restrictive code removed. Also, you can easily convert an E2B USB drive into an official Ventoy USB drive (original unmodified Ventoy) by making three different image files of 'official' Ventoy from the latest build of Ventoy and 'switching' one of them into Partition 2 (uses Ventoy grub2 boot code too).
The old v2.06 Make_E2B_USB_Drive.cmd had a typo in the URL to get the LatestVersion.txt file from the server. This caused a 3-5 second delay and the latest version was not displayed. v2.06A fixes this issue. Since it is a minor issue, this version is still called 2.06.
MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE should now be v4.40 in E2B 2.06A.
Well, the UK is in Covid Lockdown for a month so I am reading lots of autobiographies which I buy second-hand from Amazon. I am interested in reading about the life of entrepreneurs (e.g. some of the stars in 'Dragons Den', Alan Sugar, etc.), scientists (e.g. Richard Feynman) and engineers (e.g. 'Woz') - amongst many others.
If I had my way, all high-schools should have these types of books on the English Lit. curriculum. They are so inspiring and are much more valuable to any young person than 'Catcher in the Rye' or Shakespeare ever could be. They teach you about real life, proper work ethics and how to take calculated chances when necessary. If you know anyone who is stuck in a 9-5 job and is always moaning about it - then why not give them a good autobiography for Xmas!
It has always been my philosophy in life to do my very best in any job I find myself in. I can remember working as a fruit picker at the age of 16 one summer (piecework!) and cycling 3 miles to the orchards at 6.30am each morning, working all day and cycling home completely exhausted at 6 pm, so tired I could hardly move - BUT I picked just as many apples\pears\plums as the 'professional' itinerant workers did and after a few weeks I was promoted to a group 'supervisor'.
I was talking to a young boy the other day and he was complaining about having to do very menial tasks around the office where he had just started a temporary job. He had the attitude that it was beneath him - he was not doing a very thorough job and so was getting moaned at by his boss. I pointed out that if HE was an employer and he had one employee like him and another employee that always did the same job perfectly (or even improved on the end result), which one would he pick to promote? Why would he promote someone who could not even do simple tasks well? Equally, if one of his staff constantly showed that they had good organisational skills, clever ideas, always on time, polite, well presented, worked late and never complained - wouldn't he feel that he had to promote them or else risk losing a valuable asset?
At the moment, I am half-way through Richard Branson's very large autobiography 'Losing my virginity' (#Amazon ad link) and am very much enjoying it, having lived through those times (the late 60s onwards) as a teenager/young man. The person who said 'If you can remember the ’60s, you really weren’t there' was probably right - especially if you were a student! I am certainly surprised Richard Branson can remember it all after reading about his recreational experiences in the book (or perhaps he made a few of the things up just to fill in the gaps!).
Richard Branson was apparently hopeless at school and severely dyslexic (especially with maths). He hardly had two O-levels to rub together but he worked hard, told lots of (small) lies to get started in business, took calculated risks and looked after his staff as best he could.
I am just at the part in his autobiography where Branson states that the initial instrument list that Mike Oldfield requested for recording his album (now known as 'Tubular Bells'), actually included tubular bells. However, in the YT video (below), Mike Oldfield implies that their inclusion was serendipitous - he happened to see them being removed from Virgin's Manor recording studio by the previous band and spontaneously asked for them to be taken back inside because he could probably make use of them.. but maybe your take is different...
Our USA cousins may only recognise Tubular Bells as the music that was in 'The Exorcist', but in my day you had to immediately go out and buy the Tubular Bells LP within a week of it's release or you just weren't cool! Every teenager had the Tubular Bells LP cover in his bedroom.
Of course, after watching this YT video, it has now prompted me to listen to the whole Tubular Bells LP again - and it's still great!
P.S. If you can recommend any good autobiographies - please let me know.
Update Add_Ventoy.cmd, MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE.cmd, UPDATE_E2B_DRIVE.cmd (if more than one E2B drive is connected, the agFM files could be added to the wrong drive partition 2). Change download URLs.
Update UtilMan password .cmd files to also change magnify.exe and use new account name of ADMIN9.
Update Add_Ventoy.cmd to warn if core.img is not present.
Arfan noticed that the F3 Boot Menu was not working properly in agFM v1.64. Please use the latest v1.65 to fix it. You can update by running the update agFM .cmd file in the \e2b folder on partition 2 as usual.
In a recent E2B chat session, a user wanted to use an E2B USB drive to contain lots of special disk images. These images contained multiple partitions. Some of these images used multiple GPT partitions. For instance multiple Mac OS X installers, full multiple-partition Windows To Go with BitLocker, full Linux OS with swap and encrypted data partitions.etc.
Unfortunately, such a scenario is not feasible when using Easy2Boot (at least not easily!) - however, the user did own an IODD DVD emulator, so I suggested using it's VHD feature.
He did not realise that it could be used in this way!
The IODD Mini
The IODD Mini #ad SSD CD\DVD drive emulator is a solid-state version of the IODD 2531 and 2541 (see previous blog article here).
You can see from the picture below that it is approx 9cm x 4cm in size and will easily fit in a pocket.
As you may know, these Zalman and IODD 'DVD' emulators can load ISO files and then the USB device will appear as a USB DVD drive.
They can also load a VHD file and then it will appear to a computer as a 'USB disk' - so you can boot to a VHD containing a fully install Windows OS.
However, he did not realise that you could simply create an 'empty' VHD and then select that on his IODD device - thus the USB drive will appear as an unformatted USB drive.
He can then partition and format it as he wishes, install an OS to the USB 'drive', etc.
Thus it is possible for his IODD to contain multiple disk images of different multiple-partition Windows OS's, Linux OS's with swap partitions, Mac OS X, Mac Installer, Hackintosh Installers, DOS Flash images, etc. and they can be MBR or GPT partitions.
He can even mount more than one VHD as a disk device, so the second VHD could contain common programs, drivers, data, etc. which he can easily access after booting from the first VHD. You can even boot from one VHD and install to another VHD.
The IODD Mini VHD file can be configured to appear as a Removable 'Flash' drive or a 'Fixed Disk' HDD - just use either a .RMD extension or a .VHD file extension. If required, you can also write-protect the virtual disk too.
In case you missed it, today is the last day of the Amazon Prime sale.
If you read my earlier blog posts, you will know that I have recently subscribed to Readly and cancelled all my paper magazine subscriptions. Yesterday, I noticed that the Amazon Fire HD's are now on sale with massive reductions, so I just received my new Fire HD 10 (#ad) this morning - installed Google Play and Chrome - and logged into Readly.com. Wow! Very nice display and it works as an Amazon Echo Show too - bargain!.
agFM v1.63 just has a very small change to the \boot\grubfm\SAMPLE_startup_menu.txt example menu file. The small change will cause all .pf2 font files that are present in your theme folder to be automatically loaded.
#SET STYLE (change section below if required) #mymenu=0 standard agFM theme #mymenu=1 using $mytheme as theme (rename folder \boot\grubfm\themes\sample_slack to slack) NO SPACES - DO NOT USE sample_slack folder as it will be changed on update #mymenu=2 User wallpaper, no theme (change USER MENU CONFIG section below) #mymenu=3 Text mode - most compatible and quickest - use if keyboard issues (English only) - see section 3 below set mymenu=0 #if mymenu=1 then mytheme specifies the theme folder to be used set mytheme="slack"
######## MYMENU=1 - USERS GRUB2 THEME ######## if [ "${mymenu}" = "1" ] ; then # Load fonts - if your theme uses special fonts (not unicode) this loads ALL font files # The .pf2 font files should be inside the theme folder for font in (${user})/boot/grubfm/themes/${mytheme}/*.pf2; do loadfont ${font} ; done # You can use the lsfonts command to list the currently loaded fonts
# Rename \boot\grubfm\themes\sample_slack folder to slack then edit background.png to add your own wallpaper # uncomment 'menu_pixmap_style' in each .txt file to add a grey box behind the menu text export theme_std="(${user})/boot/grubfm/themes/${mytheme}/theme.txt"; export theme_fm="(${user})/boot/grubfm/themes/${mytheme}/fm.txt"; export theme_info="(${user})/boot/grubfm/themes/${mytheme}/info.txt"; export theme_help="(${user})/boot/grubfm/themes/${mytheme}/help.txt"; export theme=$theme_std # themes must not contain spaces if ! [ -f "$theme" ] ; then echo "ERROR: Can't find $theme" ; read ; fi fi ####################################
This means that if you use your own grub2 theme and it contains .pf2 font files, then they will be automatically loaded.
Although it is always better to try to repair a Windows OS by booting from the original Windows ISO, it is not always present on your E2B USB drive!
This tip works for most Windows 8 or Windows 10 systems. It allows you to repair the OS without needing to have any ISO or WinPE type payload file on the E2B drive and it will always use the correct matching version of WinRE to repair or access the original OS installation - even if you don't actually know what OS version was installed.
It relies on the fact that most Windows 8/10 systems will already contain a \Recovery folder on the internal hard disk containing a winre.wim file. It could be contained within a separate Recovery partition or it could be in the main NTFS boot partition.
This method allows you to boot to the Recovery console and from there you can use the various repair/troubleshooting repair features or drop to the command shell and type in your own commands.
Since E2B\agFM\Ventoy can boot from .wim files, we can directly boot from the winre.wim file like this...
The more expensive version is about the only software that allows you to get past a Windows Online account on a Windows 10 system.
Of course, a free alternative to bypass a Windows 10 online account login (by creating a new account) can be done by booting to a Windows 10 ISO from Easy2Boot (UEFI or MBR) and choosing the Utilman - Hack Windows.xml XML file.
agFM v1.62 has some bug fixes, language improvements and some new features and changes. The main change is that the first-letter auto-jump feature now works in grubfm as well as the startup menu.
The default agFM menu (\boot\grubfm\startup_default.cfg) now sets the three grub2 variables:
This is just a heads up about the end of the Readly special offer. Readly is the online magazine service which I have been enjoying now for over a month. I have now cancelled my three paper magazine subscriptions as I now just use Readly to read all my magazines. This saves me about £9 a month plus I get to read dozens of the other mags that I am interested in!
The Readly special offer of 2 months free ends October 31st.
You can read all these and 100's more! Photography, cars, games, fashion, DIY, hobbies, finance, etc. it's all there!
Here are a few of my reasons:
Save money - OK, I admit it, my initial reason was that it was cheaper. If your household subscribes to lots of mags, you can save a small fortune!
If I don't like it, I have nothing to lose - it's free for 2 months and I can always cancel the subscription at any time.
I reckon I only actually read 50% of the pages anyway.
I never re-read or go back to the old mags - every so often I throw them out, so why do I need them in paper format? I can always download a copy now anyway.
Save the forests - the pages are useless as toilet paper anyway!
Unlimited! I can now read 100's of magazines for free
Browse all mags
Free daily and weekend newspapers
Access to all back-copies
Searchable - I can search all mags for keywords instantly
I don't have to wait for the post to arrive (which is sometimes a day or two late) - the latest issue is available very quickly on Readly.
I get an email whenever a new issue comes out.
P.S. I bought an Amazon Fire HD 10" (#ad). It is cheap and ideal for reading the mags/newspapers on. I installed Google Play store and then the Readly app.
Taylor contacted me yesterday to ask how to switch back the original E2B partition after successfully managing to UEFI64-boot and switch in a new WinPE .imgPTN23 file.
My answer was to use the BIOS Boot menu to boot to the agFM Partition 2 and then pick the 'Restore E2B partitions' menu option from the agFM menu...
However, it seems the reason that Taylor was having problems, was that his/her Thinkpad T470s BIOS was only listing the first WinPE Partition 1 in the Boot Menu - the 2nd agFM partition was not listed in the boot menu!
No UEFI Boot option listed for Partition 2!
It seems that the UEFI BIOS only listed the first partition that it found that has a readable (usually FAT) partition and that contains a valid UEFI boot file - in this case \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI in the WinPE Partition 1.
Yesterday I had some problems with Easy2Boot.com. My host WebNode has now finally admitted that they have made some changes to the server without telling me!
This had the affect that you may have got error pages such as 'Too many redirects' when accessing some pages on the www.easy2boot.com website yesterday. This should now be fixed.
However, the other problem is that the download URLs on the E2B site have now all been changed by WebNode and thus broken. This means that the .cmd scripts which used wget.exe to fetch the latest versions are now all broken! Grrrr...
So the current Easy2Boot v2.05 version will no longer download agFM from the E2B host servers when you ask it to add agFM to partition 2! Also the various update scripts in agFM are all broken now and so a new version of agFM (v1.60) has just been updated and released.
If you are having problems updating E2B, please download the latest versions from the Alternate Download site. Extract the files to an empty folder and run the UPDATE_E2B_DRIVE.CMD script.
If you get stuck, you can always just extract the E2B files in the E2B zip file straight onto your E2B partition, and extract the agFM .zip file straight onto your agFM partition 2.
Please let me know if you have any issues. I will release E2B v2.06 in the next few days.
2020-10-02: The old download URLs now seem to be working again!
'longpanda' has released the latest version of Ventoy and the 10-second delay has now been removed.
You can update to this new version by downloading the new Ventoy-1.0.22-Windows.zip file and drag-and-drop it onto the \e2b\Update agFM\Add_Ventoy.cmd file on partition 2 (or if you have the latest agFM beta, simply click on the Update_to_latest_Ventoy_version.cmd file).
This BETA version has some more minor grub\grubfm bugfixes.
It also allows us to use the auto-jump feature (as used in E2B grub4dos menu). You hit a letter key and the next menu entry beginning with that letter is highlighted on the menu.
# disable the grub2 menu debug hotkeys c and e (agFM v1.59+) # Tip: To enable using a special hotkey - see hiddenentry "[TAB] ENABLE GRUB2 HOTKEYS" example at bottom of this file #export grub_disable_console=1 #export grub_disable_edit=1 # enable first-letter auto-jump hotkey feature in this menu only (does not work in grubFM) - console and edit hotkey must be disabled. #export grub_enable_menu_jump=1
The first two settings will propagate to grubfm when it loads, however the menu_jump setting is not supported by the grubfm menu system, so auto-jump only works in your initial startup_menu.txt menu file.
I hope the developer, a1ive, will also add the jump_menu feature into grubfm - but first the F search hotkey which is already used to search the USB drive for certain files types, will need to be re-assigned to a non-letter hotkey, e.g. F7/F8/F9/F10.
F - grubfm Search hotkey
P.S. I have also added an experimental \e2b\Update agFM\Update_to_latest_Ventoy_version.cmd script - this will automatically find the latest version of Ventoy, download it and add it to your E2B drive. This saves having to find the latest version yourself and then drag-and-drop the zip file onto the Add_Ventoy.cmd batch file.
agFM v1.59 has a few small bugfixes which a1ive has added into grub and grubfm.
This version also allows you to disable the grub2 menu hotkeys c and e to prevent the user from accidentally pressing the c or e key and dropping into the console or the menu edit screen.
Since it is often useful to have a 'secret' key which will enable the grub2 hotkeys again, the SAMPLE_startup_menu.txt file also contains a hiddenentry example which allows you to press the TAB key if you want to enable the grub2 hotkeys, but you must press TAB quickly as soon as the initial menu with timeout is displayed - TAB won't work once the agFM File Manager is loaded,
Here are the entries in the SAMPLE_startup_menu.txt file which you can now add into your startup_menu.txt file if you have one in ptn2:\boot\grubfm (uncomment the lines in red):
# disable the grub2 menu debug hotkeys c and e (agFM v1.59+) # Tip: To enable using a special hotkey - see hiddenentry "[TAB] ENABLE GRUB2 HOTKEYS" example at bottom of this file #export grub_disable_console=1 #export grub_disable_edit=1
There was a bug in agFM v1.57 which caused the E2B Ventoy boot option to not be shown in the E2B Main Menu.
Also, wget was not downloading the core.img file correctly.
This version has a newer version of wget.exe and a revised \e2b\Add_Ventoy.cmd file.
To update agFM go to Partition 2 \e2b\Update agFM folder and run Download and update agFM_v2.cmd
After you update to agFM v1.57, you can drag-and-drop any new version of the Ventoy ZIP file onto the \e2b\Update agFM\Add_Ventoy.cmd file and you should have working E2B Main Menu and agFM F5 options to launch Ventoy from UEFI64 booting.
agFM will thus allow you to Secure UEFI64-boot to Ventoy without needing to disable Secure Boot or use Mok Manager (which does not work on many systems). Ventoy does not require contiguous files and is quicker when loading and running ISOs.
Ventoy 1.0.21 released
Ventoy v1.0.21 has just been released (adds beta support for VHDs) and it now warns the user if it is not running from an 'official' Ventoy USB drive!
You now have to wait 10 seconds.
The developer, longpanda, has said he will change this in the next version as he will check that the partitions conform to the correct 'Ventoy' layout and then will maybe just show the 'UNOFFICIAL' word on the screen just to signify that if you do find a problem with Ventoy, you should test it again using an 'official' Ventoy USB drive before reporting the issue.
So hopefully this delay will be removed in the next version of Ventoy. Meanwhile, if you don't want this delay, use Ventoy 1.0.20.
To update, click the Make_E2B.exe - Update E2B button.
Then check that you have E2B 2.05 and agFM 1.57 by MBR and UEFI-booting.
To add Ventoy, download the latest version of Ventoy .ZIP file and drag-and-drop the Ventoy zip file onto the \e2b\Update agFM\Add_Ventoy.cmd file on the 2nd agFM partition.
Ventoy does not require the ISO files to be contiguous.
# Change Logs
E2B 2.05 2020-09-09
Change sort code so E2B menu system can now work on systems with just 64MB RAM.
Bugfix in Make_E2B.exe for Chinese language not working
Enhancement - alphabetically sort files in LstFExt.g4b - so now \_ISO\WINDOWS\XP ISO files are sorted alphabetically.
Add_Ventoy.cmd added - \_ISO\docs\MAKE_E2B-USB_DRIVE\Add_Ventoy.cmd can be used with Ventoy.xx.xx.xx.zip to add or update Ventoy onto 2nd agFM Partition.
Windows Install menu will display 'HDD1=GPT' if it detects that the first internal hard disk has GPT partitions.
agFM v1.57 2020-09-09
Bugfix for MBR\Legacy install of Windows Setup not allowing Internal hard disk to be selected
Update agFM version
Ventoy support - F5 now will boot to Ventoy if present on Partition 2
\e2b\Update agFM\Add_Ventoy.cmd added (drag and drop Ventoy zip file onto Add_Ventoy.cmd to add Ventoy MBR+UEFI64).
Note: I have also updated eBook #4 and eBook #1. You can obtain the updates by using the link in the confirmation that was email sent to you by Payhip when you first purchased it.
P.S. Don't forget to subscribe to this blog for more news!
E2B v2.05d Beta now includes \_ISO\docs\Make_E2B_USB_Drive\Add_Ventoy.cmd.
Just download the latest Ventoy .zip file and drop the Ventoy .zip file onto the Add_Ventoy.cmd file on your E2B USB drive (Windows 10 only).
Let me know if you see any see issues.
P.S. agFM v1.57Beta3 also includes the Add_Ventoy.cmd file in the \e2b\Update agFM folder. This means that Windows 7/8 users can first switch to the 2nd partition (using Switch_E2B.exe - Access partition 2 on Removable drive button) and then drag-and-drop the downloaded Ventoy .zip file onto the Add_Ventoy.cmd file. Don't forget to switch back partitions 1 and 2 afterwards!
In the UK and probably many other countries, the schools, colleges and universities are starting to open again. Also we are being asked to go back into our offices and shops. However, if we are not careful, this could lead to the start of a second wave of the epidemic.
It has been estimated that over 40% of grandparents are 'carers' for their grandchildren. Since Corona has a more severe effect on older people and those with health problems, it makes sense to continue to avoid contact and close proximity to ALL other people (even those in the same household). The grandparents should try to keep their distance from the kids (somehow!).
The larger the 'dose' - the more severe the symptoms?
Searches for files on all NTFS drives in seconds! Can use multiple wildcards in the search string e.g. *win*.iso or abd*def.j*.
Note: Does not work on exFAT, FAT32 or other non-NTFS file systems - but it is super fast!
Tip: If you add a drive (e.g. NTFS USB drive or change a drives contents), then you must press F5 to reload the NTFS filesystem indexes before searching again.
Compare two files or two folders. Side-by-side view lets you easily copy over portions of a file with just a click. This makes it very easy to compare two versions and make changes.
Find and Replace - find any string in all matching files and can then replace all occurrences with a different string in all those files.
This is useful when I want to find out which files contain a particular string. I can then double-click to load up the file or I can replace the string with a different string throughout all files.
These new versions are experimental and they allow you to add any Ventoy release to your E2B+AgFM USB drive.
Background
a1ive's latest grubfm allows the F5 function key to boot Ventoy or AIOBOOT from a separate partition which contains those files. However, it is not very useful as we cannot use the same FAT32 partition that E2B+agFM already uses and Ventoy requires a particular fixed partition order!
If Ventoy is detected, then pressing F5 will boot from efi/boot/bootx64.efi on the Ventoy partition or MBR\Legacy boot from the grub2 boot sector (which is actually grub4dos on an E2B drive). The Ventoy files cannot therefore be on the same FAT32 partition as the agFM files.
AIOBOOT can be present on any partition and F5 will boot from the /efi/boot/bootx64.efi file or the /AIO/grub/i386-pc/core.img file (for MBR\Legacy booting). The AIOBOOT files cannot therefore be on the same FAT32 partition as the agFM files.
So the current Ventoy\AIOBOOT F5 function is not suitable for E2B+agFM!
Just signed up to Readly (first month free - cancel if you don't like it!). It's the Spotify of mags! Not only can I view 1000s of mags for free, but I have access to back copies and I can search ALL of the mags for any mention of a key word or phrase (such as "easy2boot") and see all the pages which mention E2B in all mags! I am seriously considering cancelling all my current paper mag subscriptions! This is cheaper, faster and gives me access to way more mags. Only problem is that I might have to buy an iPad or Chromebook now...
P.S. I bought an Amazon Fire HD 10" (#ad). It is cheap and ideal for reading the mags/newspapers on. I installed Google Play store and then the Readly app.
Anwar has discovered a bug where agFM (MBR grub2 only) can report a contiguous file as being non-contiguous.
agFM v1.56 - changes from v1.55 are...
SAMPLE_startup_menu.txt revised - now only shows 'Restore E2B Partitions' menu entry when the backup partition is a valid MBR.
Bugfix in agFM MBR code (grubfm.iso) to fix issue of some files reported as not contiguous (thanks to Anwar for reporting bug).
Latest agFM build with various bug-fixes.
Variable 'hires' (set hires=1) can now be set in your menu so that WinPE runs at highest screen resolution available (e.g. set in in startup_menu.txt). Setting this may cause virtual machines to default to their highest resolution but it should be OK to set the hires variable when booting from real systems.
The wimboot code has changed - do not specify bcd, boot.sdi or bootmgr files in wimboot command list as they are not needed. MBR\Legacy also uses the wimboot command now.
Ventoy modules have been removed by a1ive from agFM..
The new v1.56 version of E2B agFM can be found here. Just unzip the file directly onto the second FAT32 partition to update from v1.55.
The Update download is still 1.55 and will be updated in a few days to 1.56.
As you may be aware, the agFM grub2 boot files which are added to the second FAT32 partition when you make an Easy2Boot v2 USB drive uses a Kaspersky shim to load the a1ive grub2 kernel.
Because the Kaspersky shim is signed, it means that it can load the grub2 kernel which can then effectively disable Secure Boot!
This allows us to boot an insecure grub2 kernel and we can do pretty much anything we like to the system, including booting to non-secure OS's!
This loophole was reported to Microsoft last year (if not before!) and Microsoft tried to fix it using a Windows Update KB which was rolled out to all Windows 10 systems earlier this year. The 'hotfix' added an entry into the UEFI firmware dbx 'blacklist' of the BIOS. Thus the signed Kaspersky shim file was blacklisted by the UEFI BIOS.
Unfortunately, the KB hotfix caused problems with many systems because the same signed Kaspersky shim was used by some OEMs as standard - so these systems suddenly refused to Secure UEFI-boot after the Microsoft Update was applied!
So Microsoft quickly reversed the KB Kaspersky hotfix part in the next hotfix removed the blacklist dbx entry from the UEFI BIOS again. So - assuming you could get your system to non-secure boot by disabling Secure Boot in the BIOS, you could do a Windows Update and then re-enable Secure Boot again. Of course, your system would still be vulnerable though.
Since then it seems Microsoft, Linux developers and grub2 developers have actually bothered to look at and analyse the shims and grub2 code which they are getting signed and have found a large number of other vulnerabilities too! To me this raises a number of questions about the Microsoft Secure Boot signing process:
What did Microsoft actually do when they signed Secure Boot files - just accept a huge amount of $$$ and sign any old boot file without bothering to fully analyse it?
Why does everyone insist that Open Source code is so desirable when there has been gaping security holes in grub2 for years?
A recent number of these vulnerabilities have now been fixed in grub2, but updating systems is not going to be easy! We cannot simply blacklist all current and older versions of grub2 by adding entries to the UEFI dbx blacklist. This would prevent any OS on older drives, backups, old install media, USB drives, PXE servers, etc. from Secure Booting because they would still contain the old, blacklisted, grub2 signed UEFI boot files. See the 'mitigation' section of this article for more details.
For the complete picture, read the whole article here.
Note also that very new linux/grub2 OS's (install ISOs and updates) may have these new 'fixes' added and it may prevent them from UEFI Secure booting and in some cases even non-Secure UEFI booting then fails!...
July 30 Important Update
Some of the Linux distribution updates appear to be leading to unsuccessful reboots. The developers and distribution maintainers are working to provide new updates. The maintainers are recommending to avoid installing updates for grub2, shim, and other bootloader-related applications until new packages are available. Some of the issues to watch are listed below:
This is just a quick blog post to say 'Hi'. I have been busy doing other things recently (like playing with my new IODD Mini SSD - Amazon link which is performing very well) so I have not been spending much time on E2B.
In my few moments of free time, I have been enjoying watching Adamant IT repair shop YouTube videos which are quite entertaining. He has videos on 'live' repair and also 'live' PC builds as well as reviews, etc.
Although I have retired from repairing/building/developing PCs and Notebooks now, unless they have changed a lot in the last 6 years or so, I thought I would go through what I tended to do to diagnose and fix PCs\Notebooks.
The Medicat 20.05 download comes as a .BIN file which contains a 512-byte header file which is only recognised by a few utilities such as OSFMounter and ImageUSB by Passmark.
Here is how to convert it to a VHD file which is suitable for loading via your Zalman\IODD device.
Note: For medicat.20.06.1.img - from here - I used BitTorrent and then just copied the .img file to my IODD\Zalman and renamed it to medicat.20.06.1.vhd. You can then mount it as a virtual drive.
The COMSS 2020-06 multiboot utility ISO is now available. There is a Lite version and a 'full fat' version. The initial menu prompts you to select either Russian or English at the start.
The release of Medicat 20.05 is rather odd. It is intended that you make a Medicat 64GB or larger USB drive from it and it is not suitable for multibooting.
The new Medicat only supports 64-bit CPUs. It is based on Ventoy which requires two particular partitions in a specific order and the download is a PassMark .bin file which has a 512-byte header portion and so it cannot be treated as a VHD file or normal disk image file which we can use with a Zalman\IODD virtual drive emulator.
The main Medicat ISO is inside the image and contains the WinPE .wim file.
When Medicat boots, it will look for the USB drive and mount the USB drive as Y:.
It then expects to find program folders under Y:\Programs and the PortableApps programs under the Y:\PortableApps folder.
There are other ISOs within the image and Ventoy is used to boot them. We can extract these other ISO files from the .bin image and simply copy them to our E2B USB drive.
Medicat 20.06 is a .img file. It does not have the 512-byte header and can be renamed to .VHD for use with a Zalman\IODD. However it does not boot correctly as a .vhd using E2B and so must also be converted as below if using it on an E2B USB drive.
Medicat 21.01 is in the form of zip files for use with 7Zip and Ventoy. You are supposed to extract the contents to the first partition of a previously-made Ventoy USB disk. Instead, you can extract the files to an empty folder on your Windows hard disk and then decide which ISOs, etc. you want to copy to your E2B USB drive's first NTFS partition and choose the appropriate menu folder. Alternatively, just copy all the files (except \autorun.inf and \autorun.ico) to the root of your E2B first NTFS partition and only use Ventoy to boot to Medicat. It will add lots of folders to the root however and may overwrite the contents of your \ventoy folder which will affect the Ventoy theme and menu settings.
I just noticed today that since I started using Fosshub to host the E2B downloads in June 2019, the download counter for E2B has now reached over 500,000 downloads!
I can also tell that in the last 30 days, the Make_E2B.cmd file that is used to make a new E2B USB drive, has been run over 63,000 times (it downloads a file to notify the user of the latest version of E2B) and that the agFM UEFI files have been downloaded over 19,000 times in 30 days.
If you buy a licensed version of Kon-Boot v3.5, you can now use it with large USB drives (previously we were limited to drives of 16GB or less).
This means you can now licence a 128GB or 256GB SanDisk USB E2B flash drive or even a 2TB USB Hard Drive.
Once you have installed Kon-Boot, you can backup the files, re-format the drive as an E2B drive and then copy back on the special encrypted USB-drive specific EFI boot file made by the Kon-Boot .exe install process.
If you have already purchased a Kon-Boot licence and have activated it on a small USB flash drive (<16GB) then you cannot switch the licence to a different USB drive - you must purchase a new licence for each drive you want to use Kon-Boot with because the USB Vendor, Product ID and Serial Number of the USB drive is encrypted into the boot file the first time you make a Kon-Boot USB drive. The same USB drive values are recorded on their server for each unique licence number.
Details of how to add the licensed Kon-Boot UEFI boot files to an E2B v2 USB drive are in eBook #4.
You can instead just make a FAT32 .imgPTN or .imgPTN23 file from the files on the Kon-Boot USB drive. Make sure the volume name is KONBOOT once it is switched-in.
Note: E2B+agFM allows you to Secure Boot without needing to purchase the more expensive 'commercial' Kon-Boot licence. However, Windows 10 (UEFI) online account bypass support is only included with the full Kon-Boot commercial licence.
If you see this, the licence details did not match with the USB drive's ID!
Note: For best compatibility, the Kon-Boot files should be within 128 GiB from the start of the USB drive.
Improve 'Restore E2B partitions' detection menu entry so does not appear if no valid backup
Update to latest a1ive grub2\grubfm version
To download and update run \e2b\Update agFM\Download and update agFM_v2.cmd from the second agFM partition.
IODD Mini SSD
For simple ISO and VHD booting, this neat little USB 3 SSD AES256-bit encrypted drive is hard to beat! Just select the ISO\VHD on the display and boot. VHD files can be set to emulate a fixed or removable USB drive and you can write-protect it too if you wish. You can also set the whole SSD drive in the same way, so you can have a 512GB Removable USB 3 SSD drive or a write-protected 512GB Fixed disk or any combination thereof.
P.S. I just received an IODD Mini 512GB SSD drive from IODD for evaluation. So please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like me to cover. So far I am impressed! It is quite small, fast and seems to work well.
If you are using agFM v1.50 or later and are using a Removable USB drive for E2B, then you will find that the Windows Install from ISO function using agFM stops with an 'imdisk' error if you also use an XML file.
This is due to agFM actually using ImDisk to mount the ISO now (since v1.50) and so the E2B cmd file tries to install imdisk again.
If you are using a USB Fixed disk for E2B then you won't see this error.
Some of the eBooks were previously priced at $6.99, $7 and $10 but for the month of May the price was reduced to just $5 each. If you buy more than one eBook you get a 10% reduction on all eBooks in your Basket too.
This 'Corona' special offer ends tomorrow when the price will go up from $5 each to $6.99 each.
P.S. There are a few reviews about the eBooks on the GuestBook page if you want to see if they might be useful to you (and I didn't pay them to write that - honest!).
This version adds the ability to use a file with a .imgptnREP3 file extension (file must be on partition 3).
Changes from 1.50 (v1.51v2 changes in orange)
New search (F) button added (e.g. search for file types such a .iso, .wim).
Boot Windows ISO option now runs X:\Setup.exe so that Repair option is offered if no XML file is specified.
Allow use of file extension override suffixes (e.g. Medicat v18.10 stable_.isowin.iso) so extension can be kept as .iso but it will immediately boot with no secondary menu.
Support _.winntsetup.iso file extension suffix for booting to Windows PE from Install ISO and directly loading the ISO into WinNTSetup.exe.
Danish language.
Ventoy boot option for ISOs added
Bugfix for Auxilliary partition image file not detected as hfs type 0xAF (e.g. MacOS..imgPTN23+MacOS.),
.imgPTNrep3 file extension now supported (file must be in partition 3).
Add a check to prevent one .imgPTN* file from being used if a .imgPTN* file has already been switched in (thus preventing the backup MBR from being overwritten).
The 'Restore E2B Partitions' menu entry in the startup_default.cfg menu is now displayed whenever the MBR partition table contains a 'switched-in' .imgPTN image.
The .imgptnREP3 file extension allows you to replace partition 3 with any other image file.
I extracted the 10GB 3.hfs file from a Niresh Catalina.dmg file and renamed it.
When it is switched in to replace partition 3, I can use the agFM menu to boot from it (use F3) - you should also be able to directly boot to it from a Mac using its Clover boot manager.
You can thus UEFI-install any MacOS from one E2B drive.
A1ive has now added Ventoy v1.0.10 to the main build of agFM.
You can download the latest beta v1.51v from here.
The advantage of Ventoy is that it can work from a write-protected drive (but agFM requires writeable media for some functions) and the ISO files do not need to be made contiguous. It may also boot faster. The disadvantage is that it is relatively young and may have quite a few compatibility issues.
I have found that Ventoy does not seem to like UEFI-booting under VirtualBox, so if you experience any issues with the Ventoy boot option for ISOs, please test it on a real system.
Please note: There are three 'SKUs' of Ventoy v1.0.10:
1. Official Ventoy release from Ventoy website
2. Ventoy as added to A1ive grubfm
3. Ventoy as added to E2B+agFM
If you experience any issues on a real system with Ventoy, please first test by renaming \boot\grubfm\config on the agFM partition so that the E2B+agFM modifications are suppressed and thus you are testing the pure a1ive version of Ventoy.
Before reporting any Ventoy issues it is best to make an official Ventoy USB drive and re-test the same ISO on that and then report the issue to Ventoy via reboot.pro. Make sure you clearly state what version you have tested (Ventoy USB drive, or A1ive Ventoy (no config file), or E2B agFM Ventoy) and also how you booted (MBR or UEFI) + make\model of target system.
I have made some tweaks to agFM so that it can now directly boot Strelec, DLCBoot, HBCDPE, Bob Omb's PE, Gandalf PE and Medicat ISOs - no secondary menu is presented if you use file extension override suffixes.
agFM now understands some file extension override suffixes (similar to E2B feature) - e.g. filename_.override.iso
The special suffix tells E2B\agFM to boot it as if it had that file extension. This allows the file to still keep it's .iso file extension which is needed by some WinPEs to make them work correctly.
· Medicat v18.10 stable_.isowin64.iso · Bob Omb's WinPE_.isomap64.iso · DLCBoot WinPE_.isohw.iso · Windows 10 x64 Eng_.winntsetup.iso
Currently isowin, isomap, isodef, isodefault, isoagfm, isoloop,
isohw, isope and winntsetup are supported - with or
without the four special suffixes 64, 32, 3GB, 4GB.
agFM v.1.51
New search (F) button added (e.g. search for file types such a .iso, .wim from current folder).
Boot Windows ISO option now runs X:\Setup.exe so that the Windows Repair option is offered if no XML file is specified.
Allow use of file extension override suffixes (e.g. Medicat v18.10 stable_.isowin.iso) so extension can be kept as .iso but it will immediately boot with no secondary menu.
Support _.winntsetup.iso file extension suffix for booting to Windows PE from Install ISO and directly loading the ISO into WinNTSetup.exe.
This should be used with E2B v2.04c Beta.
Check the Alternate Download site for these new versions (see top-left sidebar).
Full details are in eBook #4 on agFM v1.12 which I have just updated so you can download the new versions now.
v2.04b Beta now includes the Danish language as an option.
If you want to boot to a Strelec ISO, try the extension .isowin. This should allow you to boot to the two Win10 WinPEs using the Easy2Boot menu system or using the agFM menu system.
a1ive grub2 File Manager.mnu and Enable or Disable UEFI Booting.mnu added to \_ISO\MAINMENU folder.
The three letters 'MBR' will be ignored if present anywhere in any file extension. This can be used to prevent agFM from listed these files. Useful if the files do not support UEFI-booting and only boot via the E2B menu system.
New version SWITCH_E2B.exe to fix small bug which affected the appearance only (not function).
New default background
Update_E2B_Drive.cmd now will update agFM files if present.
Internet ping test changed in MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE.cmd script in case ipv4 blocked.
agFM Sample Mnu files folder added with examples files,
WinContig files updated
Keyboard scan code files updated
KeyCheck.g4b test script added (type KeyCheck from grub4dos console and press down keys to get BIOS key status codes (e.g. NUM LOCK, CAPS LOCK, CTRL, etc.)
XP Step 1 now warns user if not enough memory to load XP ISO file into RAM
Example commented code added to SDI_CHOCO.cmd for detecting UEFI or MBR boot
