Version 1.66 and 1.67 had a bug when booting Legacy Linux and other non-windows ISOs using the .isodef, isomap and .isomem options in agFM. This was due to a1ive changing his code and removing the MAP file from his file structure!
Use the \e2b\Update agFM batch file to update to the new version.
I was asked today for a grub2 menu which would protect the E2B USB drive from being cloned onto another drive.
The lines below can be added into your startup_menu.txt file.
It checks the total drive capacity of your E2B USB drive - if it is not as expected, then it displays a graphics file (candle in this case) and then prompts you to enter a password (3 chances). If the user does not know the password, then it loads a 'guest' menu, but it could just as easily shutdown or reboot the PC.
You can display any graphics file you like (.png, .jpg, .bpm) and you can change the messages, etc. as you wish.
I have just updated eBook #4. You can get the update for free by using the link in your original Payhip email that you received when you first purchased the eBook.
I also found an old bug in the .isopersist code in agFM, so I have now updated agFM to v1.67 today. The problem was that the *-rw persistence file would only work if it was in the root of the USB drive. Now it can be in either the root or the same folder as the Linux ISO.
Easy2Boot and agFM can boot WinPE-based ISOs easily, however many of these ISOs require access to files on the 'DVD' drive once they have booted to WinPE.
Since these files are inside the ISO file on the USB drive, these extra utilities cannot be found by the miniWindows environment and you may find some Desktop and StartMenu items missing!
E2B and agFM can make this work however by using that fact that most WinPE's are built using WinBuilder which typically contain this extra startup code. When a WinPE made by WinBuilder boots, it looks for a volume containing a .ini file in the root (e.g. \WIN10PESE.ini) which specifies the path of an ISO file. WinPE will then find that ISO file and auto-mount it as a virtual DVD drive so that WinPE can now access the files within the ISO.
WIN10PESE.ini
E2B and agFM will modify these .ini files before booting the ISO (that is one reason why a write-enabled USB drive is required). The ISO filename should not contain spaces because some versions of WinBuilder cannot cope with spaces in filenames.
However, this only works if the WinPE contains this special WinBuilder startup code which looks for the special WinBuilder .ini file.
E2B and agFM also modify the \AutoUnattend.xml file in the root of the E2B USB drive - this file is automatically run if the ISO is a Windows Install ISO (but it is not usually run by WinPE ISOs).
Unfortunately, some WinPE ISOs do not contain this special startup code (e.g. c't Emergency Windows 2021). There are a number of ways around this:
Changes from v1.65 are:
agFM Beta10 adds a new F10 hotkey function (new hidden feature).
If you press F10 in a grubfm menu, then it will completely reload grub2.
You may find this useful if you run an ISO or some other payload file and grubfm loses the gfxmenu system and just displays a black-and-white text menu. If you then press F10 then the whole agFM boot file will be reloaded thus saving you having to reboot. Since some servers can take 5 minutes to reboot, you might find this useful.
The actual code is compiled within agFM (in global.sh), but if you are interested, you can add a menuentry to your own menu system as shown below:
Please test latest version 1.66 Beta7 as I hope to make it the new release version in a day or so.
See OneDrive - Latest Betas folder for the download.
Please don't just wait for it to be released before trying it. It is easy to test it by simply extracting the files to the 2nd partition. If you want to go back to the old v1.65 then simply click on \e2b\Update agFM\Download and update agFM_v2.cmd.
Changes from v1.65 are:
Todays version in 'Latest Betas' will automatically download and add 'Ventoy for Easy2boot' when you double-click the \e2b\Update agFM\Update_to_latest_Ventoy_version.cmd file.
The current version is Ventoy v1.0.29 but is slightly modified to run on E2B.
See the Ventoy page on the E2B site for details and a suggested ventoy.json file...
{
"control_uefi": [
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_MENU_MODE": "1" },
{ "VTOY_FILT_DOT_UNDERSCORE_FILE": "0" },
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_SEARCH_ROOT": "/_ISO" },
{ "VTOY_MENU_TIMEOUT": "5" },
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_IMAGE": "/_ISO/LINUX/ubuntu-18.10-desktop-amd64.iso" }
],
"control_legacy": [
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_MENU_MODE": "1" },
{ "VTOY_FILT_DOT_UNDERSCORE_FILE": "0" },
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_SEARCH_ROOT": "/_ISO" },
{ "VTOY_MENU_TIMEOUT": "10" },
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_IMAGE": "/_ISO/LINUX/linuxmint-20-cinnamon-64bit.iso" }
]
}
If you often need to gain access to a customers Windows account (local or online account) or MAC OS account but don't know the account password, then Kon-Boot is the quickest and simplest way to gain access (MBR or UEFI).
Today you can get 25% off KonBoot by using this link,
Kon-Boot can now work on larger USB drives as well as small USB Flash drives, so you can install Kon-Boot onto any USB drive and then add E2B to the same drive. More details here.
P.S. Black Friday Samsung 860 500GB SSD #ad on offer at Amazon for 47% off (over 60% off 2TB version!). If your laptop does not have an SSD hard drive, this will be the best saving you've ever made as you won't have to buy a new laptop for another few years at least! Why not give them as Christmas present and help your family upgrade their own laptops over the Christmas holidays?
Hurry! 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro (#ad) USB 3 Flash drive for only £30 !!! One of the fastest flash drives you can get - ideal for E2B!
Note: This is the superfast PRO version, not the slow, budget GO version (which is not recommended!).Check out the SD card discounts too...
I have updated the test version of Ventoy v1.0.29 for E2B and also I added the core.img into the .zip file itself.
This now makes it easier to add Ventoy to an E2B USB drive.
Latest Betas are here as usual.
I do not intend to continually patch and recompile Ventoy every few days so that it can be added to E2B, however if you want to know how I made my own version, I have written up some notes here.
My knowledge of C is limited and I am not very experienced with Linux, so please correct me if any of the instructions are wrong or maybe inaccurate!
I have also slightly modified the wallpaper in my new version of Ventoy_1.0.29_windows.zip now to make it obvious that it is not the official Ventoy version - can you tell?
I have recompiled Ventoy 1.0.29 so that it runs on E2B.
You can obtain the patched version from here.
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!
See here for more details of this recent change.
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...
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.
No major bugfixes, mainly just some housekeeping.
v2.06 - changes from E2B v2.05
A year ago Low Dough Tech brought out a YT video on E2B which got some amazing view stats (I am not jealous - honest!).
He has also recently released a new one with a quick demo of UEFI-booting...
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
This video demonstrates how to use the UtilMan XML files to create a new ADMIN account or reset an offline account password.
It should work even if your PC contains multiple Windows installations.
It speeds up and semi-automates the process so that you do not have to type multiple Windows commands.
The latest beta version of E2B v2.06c has the latest version of the .cmd scripts which now also patches the Magnify.exe file.
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.
This means that if you use your own grub2 theme and it contains .pf2 font files, then they will be automatically loaded.
e.g.
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...
KonBoot v3.6 is now the latest version and has a few bugfixes, etc.
Kon-Boot is currently the only solution worldwide we are aware of that can bypass Windows 10 online passwords!Main updates:
Updates for macOS Catalina 10.15.7 and macOS Big Sur 10.16 beta
Updates for Windows 10
Installer updates
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| Hack into a Windows 8/10 online account - just type '2'! |
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.
Here are a few of my reasons:
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...
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| No UEFI Boot option listed for Partition 2! |
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.
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.
Download v1.60a BETA from here
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.
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):Download v1.59 from here
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 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.
I have made some minor revisions to eBook #1.
If you have already purchased it, you can get the new version by using the download link that was emailed to you previously.
If you are interested in agFM and UEFI-booting, the eBook #4 has also been recently updated to v1.15.
E2B eBooks are listed here.
P.S. Subscribe to get the latest 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!
Will there be a second wave?
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!).
I have now added a patch into agFM and recompiled it since a1ive has not yet made the change to the f5.sh file in the github master.
The F5 key will now boot to Ventoy once you update partition 2 with the new v1.57Beta2 version.
Follow the previous blog article for instructions on how to add Ventoy to your E2B USB drive.
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.
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!
New Betas
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:
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| Medicat 21.01 zip file contents |
