Best long-term ETFs for UK investors (and retire with £3 million)!

If you just want to invest in the stock market, say with £100 each and every month (called 'dollar cost averaging') automatically taken from your bank account a few days after your pay day, what ETFs should you buy?

US investors, including the famous Warren Buffet, say to just invest in the S&P 500 but UK investors may also want to diversify outside US stocks because we are affected by foreign exchange rates as well as a 15% dividend withholding tax applied to US dividends.

However, US stocks have performed much better than UK or even EU stocks, even allowing for exchange rates and foreign taxes, so we have a difficult decision.

Generate autounattend.xml files for Windows 10/11

You may be familiar with https://www.windowsafg.com/ which helps you to generate unattend.xml file to automate Windows installations. Easy2Boot also includes a utility XMLtoE2B which can be used with WAFG.

There is also a site at https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ which you may find useful.

These can be useful if you are installing Windows using Ventoy or Easy2Boot.

My eBook sale was 'hacked'! (only 3 days left!)

My eBook sale has only 3 days left.

You can get between 15% and 25% off with multibuys, however, some enterprising customers seem to have been able to get 30% off by combining multiple discount offers!

Store

If you found my eBooks useful, why not get another before it is too late?

My shop front is here,

P.S. If you like the idea of earning income from a side hustle, why not get my 'How to make $1000 a month from the internet' eBook!  - recently updated to v1.10. If you think you can write and sell eBooks or have a product or business idea, this eBook should save you a lot of time and prevent you from losing money! My own real and truthful sales figures are included + useful hints and tips on how to get started, etc, Surely that is worth a few $ ;=(

Here is an example of how to set up a simple website to sell Digital Products by Hostinger, but read my eBook for hundreds of tips and Gotcha's first!

Are Dividend ETFs performing better than other ETFs?

The last 6 months have been rather weak for Tech ETFs such as IITU and even Global tracker ETFs like the benchmark SWDA.

I see that dividend ETFs show better performance as well as paying dividends.

It expected that we will continue to see volatility during October/November 2024, so it may be better to switch some funds into dividend and value ETFs during this period.

The table below shows some of the best ETFs available in the UK and for comparison IITU and SWDA. Some Dividend ETFs are accumulating funds and some pay dividends.

A 6-month chart is shown below:

Should I Buy Commodities ETFs?

Everyone needs commodities such as coffee, sugar, natural gas, etc. Their value will depend on their availability and future demand.

Wisdom Tree have many ETFs which allow you to 'gamble' on the futures price of some commodities such as Coffee (COFF) which has shown 100% gain in this last year.

Do you want to get free shares worth up to £100?

 Do you want to get free shares worth up to £100 (£8-£100 randomly allocated)?

Join Trading 212, invest with my link and we will both get free shares.

https://www.trading212.com/invite/17tLB1ol6b

Trading 212 will pay 5.1% (UK) interest on cash in your T212 accounts, no monthly charge and no share buy/sell transaction charge (apart from Stamp Duty on UK company shares and Foreign Exchange charge of typ. 0.15% on non-GBP conversions). You can also get a debit card with your account to give you a debit card account paying 5.1% on your T212 balance (check spending/ATM withdrawal limitations).

Stock market tip September 2024 (after Fed reserve rate cut 0.5%)

The USA federal reserve cut the rate by 0.5%. I am taking a cautious approach to large (magnificent 7) US stocks however and especially Tech stocks.

This means I am reducing my USA Tech exposure (XLKQ and IITU). I see finance companies (esp. credit card/lending) doing well in next 6 months and also Energy companies seem quite cheap just now. I am DCAing into world index instead of USA tech.

I have updated my ETF tip blog article with this note:

Update 21/9/2024 - Fed 0.5% rate cut happened which gave approx 1% rise to S&P. Smaller companies should now begin to do better as they will pay less interest on borrowings and can expand. The S&P600/small cap is a good bet now - e.g. ISP6 (2 divs/yr) or USSC (acc - heavier in financials which is good) or invest in both as their top 10 don't overlap. Also Financials (WFEG or XLFQ or UIFS) and Energy (IESU) seem good.

My core ETF XDEQ holding has not performed very well this last 6 months compared to the benchmark SWDA (XDEQ 1yr performance was better than SWDA), however, XDEQ has top holdings in Visa, Mastercard, Nordisk, Costco and ASML, so I expect XDEQ to outperform SWDA in this next 6 months.

N.B. This is not investment advice and I am just a random guy on the internet! Please do your own research before investing.

P.S. On 20 August I tipped gold (SGLN) as perhaps a good hedge, it is currently up 2% (probably more good luck than judgement though!).

P.P.S. I sold SGLN in early October as I don't see it going up much more compared to finance/energy/world quality/small market.

eBook SALE IS NOW ON (15%-25% off this week!)

Store

Even though my eBooks have an average review rating of over 4.5 Stars and only cost $5 (+10% less if you buy more than one), I have now reduced the price by 15% for a week (finish 30 September) so you can get 25% off if you buy two or more!

If you found my eBooks useful, why not get another?

My shop front is here,

P.S. If you like the idea of earning income from a side hustle, why not get my 'How to make $1000 a month from the internet' eBook!  - recently updated to v1.10. If you think you can write and sell eBooks or have a product or business idea, this eBook should save you a lot of time and prevent you from losing money! My own real and truthful sales figures are included + useful hints and tips on how to get started, etc, Surely that is worth a few $ ;=(

Here is an example of how to set up a simple website to sell Digital Products by Hostinger, but read my eBook for hundreds of tips and Gotcha's first!

Add DOS benchmarks to your Easy2Boot USB drive

DOS and DOS-based programs will only work if you legacy/BIOS boot to E2B.

Here are a few tools with instructions.

Phils Computer Lab DOS benchmark tools - download the zip file and extract the contents to a new folder named \DOSBENCH on the large NTFS Partition 1 of your E2B USB drive.  Then legacy boot to the E2B DOS menu and select the  'FreeDIS (from a floppy image)' option. This boots to FreeDOS - select the first 'with NTFS support' option. Now type  CD \DOSBENCH to change to the DOSBENCH folder and type DOSBENCH to run the menu.

The menu also allows you to play DOOM and a Quake demo!

Phils 386 Benchmark Pack

How to prepare your investment portfolio for these volatile times

Stock prices can go up and down a lot within a month. The value of your investment portfolio  will also go up and down too. When it goes up you will feel happy but when it drops by 10% or more, you may begin to question whether now is the time to sell!

SWDA Global Index Tracker ETF (5th August 2024 was a bad day- but the market recovered).

Amazon Prime bargains

This week you can pick up tremendous Amazon bargains!

Air Fryer

I bought an air fryer last year and I can honestly say they are great! Cheap to run, saves using lots of oil (e.g. the expensive Extra Virgin olive oil that I exclusively use), and healthier. I use mine everyday for chips, veg and meat. I now eat fresh meals every day and feel much healthier too. My electricity usage has reduced this year as I hardly ever use my main electric oven now. The air fryer has probably paid for itself already.

The unusual Schallen air fryer (#ad) is not only very cheap (just £30) but it is very easy to clean because the 'basket' is just a large Pyrex glass bowl.

Or you could up-scale to a large 5 litre Cosori (#ad) with Wi-Fi for about £70.

Is it time to buy Gold?

This year, Physical Gold has outperformed many global equity ETFs including my favourites SWDA and XDEQ. The gold ETF SGLN has shown a gain of 27.5% in one year. Over last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years it has kept pace with all world ETFs. Unlike bonds, gold can also dive when the market dives however.

This Q4 is expected to be volatile and the recent correction has scared some people but the market has now recovered. Investors are scared that a bigger correction may be coming before the end of 2024 and 2025 is also looking unsettled. 2025 is predicted to not be as good as the past two years have been. So some people are now turning to gold as a safer haven for their cash.

The graph below compares my favourite Physical Gold ETF (SGLN) to some other popular ETFs. Volatile Tech ETFs like tech ETFs XLKQ (40% gain this last year) or IITU have outperformed gold. China has a lot of secret gold (reputedly far more than they have declared) and if they need/want to sell some, they could devalue the dollar which would affect USA share prices. This would cause gold to increase in price as countries would want to increase their gold holdings to stabilise their own currency. Russia also hold a lot of gold and may need to sell some to support their Ukraine war.

Fix Ventoy UEFI Secure Boot not working on new PCs and Laptops

 

Secure Boot to grub/Ventoy/agFM/Linux, etc.

Secure Boot is supported by many Linux distributions and is an important security feature for ensuring that your boot loader and kernel have not been tampered with. Linux distributions use a Microsoft signed ‘shim’ executable that is then able to verify the subsequent boot stages - that have been signed with the distribution key. The Microsoft-signed shim is signed using the “Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI Certificate”, and this certificate is stored in the BIOS database. 

Starting in 2022 for Secured-core PCs it is a Microsoft requirement for the 3rd Party Certificate to be disabled by default. This means that for any of these platforms shipped with Windows preinstalled an extra step is needed to allow Linux or grub2 or Ventoy or E2B to boot with secure boot enabled. 

To enable secure boot to work with a non-Microsoft bootloader such as used with Linux or grub2 or Ventoy, etc. you will need to enable the “Allow Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA” option in the BIOS setup. 

Use the following steps (example Lenovo): 

No more Secure Boot Issues - just use an IODD drive!

If you need a Multiboot solution that works with Secure Boot without any problems (no BIOS issues, no MOK Manager changes to the BIOS for Ventoy, etc.), then get an IODD Virtual drive.

The latest one is USB C and is a 2.5" HDD/SSD enclosure. So you can just buy it and fit you own 2.5" SSD which are pretty cheap these days.

These devices allow you to also select fixed size VHDs as a virtual drive (as well as .ISO files and .IMA floppy image files). This means you can have 100's of virtual drives in one device. Each VHD can contain an MBR or GPT drive, each with multiple partitions (e.g. contents of a Rufus USB drive, WinPE, Windows installer, full OS's, Ventoy drive, E2B drive, etc.).

ST400 IODD (#ad link)

Simple hack to make sure Amazon deliver to you personally (no more 'drop and dash')!

In the UK, certain items are age restricted. If you include one of these items in your order, then the delivery driver must ask you for age verification. This means they must knock on your door or ring your doorbell, wait for someone to open it and then verify the age of the person that receives the parcel.

Of course, someone over 18 must be in to receive the delivery or they will need to redeliver it.

So, in the UK, simply include a knife in your order (the Amazon page will warn you that age confirmation is required - see above). Cheap knives on Amazon are often only £1-£2, so just add a useful cheap knife to your order and make sure someone over 18 will be in on the delivery day!

You can always sell any surplus knives or give them as gifts to your friends and neighbours!

Steve's stock market top UK ETFs and tips (Q3 2024)

This article will be updated regularly. Visit every week for updates. Bookmark it now!

Charts/Info correct at 11 July 2024 (Justetf.com comparisons).

Updates

Blog page updated 15/7/24

Update 26/7/24 - Current Tech stocks correction, but 2024 Q4 S&P500 expected to do well in Q4. Wait for stocks to start rise again (may start today 26/7) and then BUY. May want to sell some in Q1 2025 if USA market volatile and buy more quality or world emerging market and small cap?

Update 5/8/2024 - Markets down 2-10% !! Mainly affected by USA - Fed failing to reduce interest rates and higher unemployment. Mostly however, companies are doing OK and the US market should recover after September. Probably too late to sell now, but get cash ready to invest in late Aug/Sept as soon as stocks start to plateau. UK\EU may be good as a hedge. Could consider selling some stock and buying CSH2 (money market 5.4%) but may miss recovery! I am not selling as expect bounce up when Fed finally cuts interest rate in Sept.

Update 13/8/2024 - Markets recovering to previous 3 months level. Market expecting Fed interest rate cut in Sept and better USA employment figures. If stocks dip today/tomorrow, maybe I will buy more.

Update 14/8/2024 - Best performing ETFs YearToDate, UICM 19% (US Comms), PQVG 21% (S&P QVM), IWFM 20% (World momentum), XDEM 20% (world momentum), IITU 22% (US Tech), XLKQ 25% (US Tech).

Update 16/8/2024 - Market recovered.  Hot Tip: Buy TSLA now using ETF ICDU (Amazon 34%, Tesla 13%, Home Depot 8%).  These companies may benefit from AI and also TSLA from sale of it's non-Chinese car software to all other global car companies that currently use Chinese OTA update software. Timeframe: 1 yr. BT group, Amazon, Alphabet and MSFT looking like strong buy (most except BT already in XLKQ ETF).

2024/8/27 - I bought FLXX sold some EMIM iShares Edge MSCI EM Value and all Japan.

Update 13/9/2024 - Market dipped but now recovering again! ICDU tipped last month is up almost 6% in one month.  new tips are energy and finance sectors - e.g. IESU and IUFS for Mastercard\Visa. These are expected to do well within a 6 month time frame. For steady UK dividend stock try IUKD (5.8% in 3 months, 17% in 1 yr) which has beaten SWDA\XDEQ in last 1,3,6,12 months! Gold SGLN at all-time high, not a good time to buy - hold. I bought XLKQ 2024/9/4, XDEQ, SGLN and EQQQ 2024/9/10, IESU and IUFS 2024/9/13.

Update 21/9/2024 - Fed 0.5% rate cut happened which gave approx 1% rise to S&P. Smaller companies should now begin to do better as they will pay less interest on borrowings and can expand. The S&P600/small cap is a good bet now - e.g. ISP6 (2 divs/yr) or USSC (acc - heavier in financials which is good) or both as their top 10 don't overlap. Also Financials (WFEG or XLFQ or UIFS) and Energy (IESU - long term) seem good value.

How to make at least £20K ($20K) for free!

This article mainly applies to UK residents but the general principle applies to most countries.

WARNING: If you have a non-state Pension, you may be being ripped off!

Reading this article can save you a lot of money! Someone may have robbed you of at least 20K and you don't even know it!

agFM v1.A3 BUGFIX RELEASE - please update!

This bug affects anyone who uses .imgPTN* files that contain images of Windows Installers or WinPE images and they UEFI booting to agFM. Please update agFM.

v1.A3 2024-05-12 - bugfix - if you boot to agFM and Partition 1 has a XML or INI file in the root, agFM always permanently altered some of those files. This permanently changes the imgPTN image file contents if one has been swapped into Partition 1. The new version now only cleans these files if Partition 1 contains E2B files.

Info: When E2B (legacy) or agFM (legacy or UEFI) first boots, it cleans out the contents of various .xml files and .ini in the root of Partition 1 (see files above). If the user then runs a Windows ISO (or launches Ventoy), these files will then not affect anything.

How to improve your Ventoy USB drive!

Ventoy is a very good multiboot solution but it lacks some features and has some legacy compatibility issues. A common problem is that Linux distros keep changing and they break Ventoy compatibility and so you find that you cannot boot to the latest Linux ISO any more and have to wait for a Ventoy update. Using E2B or grubfm can often solve this issue.

Here is how to enhance your Ventoy USB drive and make it much more compatible and reliable. E2B and grubfm use a more compatible and universal method to boot Linux ISOs (but it requires the ISO to be contiguous and USB partition 4 must be unused).

HURRY - SPECIAL OFFER until May 1st - 3 months of Audible for 99p

I have previously mentioned that I used the online service Readly (use this #Ad link for 1 month free!) - to get access to thousands of magazines and publications (though I only read about a dozen or so every week, plus newspapers). This works very well despite the price increase.

However, Amazon now have an offer on for Audible (#Ad link) which I have also taken advantage of. I can listen to books and podcasts on my Amazon Echo devices or via my smartphone or computer. I can even download them and play them on my esp32 web radio project!

Get 1 audiobook of choice each month. 99p for the first month, months 2 + 3 are free. Renews automatically at £7.99 / month. Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

'Ventoy for E2B' v.1.0.97 is now released

No issues have been reported and it seems to work so I have now updated the release version.

New 'Ventoy for E2B' v1.0.97 pre-release

I have now made a pre-release version of 'Ventoy for E2B' which has been based on the current Ventoy 1.0.97 version.

The current released version is based on Ventoy 1.0.79 and so it is getting quite outdated.

How to quickly display the amount of system Total RAM under Ventoy

The easiest way to get information about the system you have booted from in Ventoy is to simply press F5 and select Hardware Information.

E2B is the only SecureBoot multiboot solution which does not modify your UEFI BIOS!

These days, many PCs and Notebooks only have UEFI boot support.

If you wish to use a multiboot solution such as Ventoy, you must either disable Secure Boot (if you can get into the BIOS) or use Ventoy's MOK Manager shim to change the UEFI BIOS so that will accept the unsigned Ventoy EFI boot file (which then makes it insecure).

However, E2B allows us to switch in any partition image and boot to it. So as long as that image contains signed boot files (as in Windows or Ubuntu, etc.) then we can Secure Boot from that image.

I have added a page to the easy2boot.xyz website here in case you were not aware. There are many ways of supporting multiple Secure Boot images on an E2B USB drive and in this example I have used HBCD_PE as the secure OS. From HBCD_PE we can switch in any OS image file.

1. Secure Boot to WinPE on the FAT32 Partition 3 of the E2B USB drive
2. Switch into Partition 1 a new partition image file (e.g. Windows Install, Ubuntu, etc.)
3. Secure Boot from  the new image now in Partition 1, after this...
4. Secure Boot to WinPE on the FAT32 Partition 3 of the USB drive
5. Restore the original E2B Partition 1

Since we are booting from a FAT32 partition 1 on the USB drive, UEFI BIOSes should not have any compatibility issues. The Secure Boot boot files on the partition are unaltered and thus Secure Boot should always work even with the fussiest BIOSes!

Instead of HBCDPE, you can use any WinPE that supports 32-bit applications (has WoW64), such as Strelec or DLC or Bob Omb's WinPE.

Easy2Boot v2.20 released

v2.20 Change History

1. Add grubenv.g4b, grubenv and grubpath.g4b to allow grub4dos to be called from grub2\Ventoy menu system. See https://rmprepusb.blogspot.com/2023/01/run-grub4dos-commands-from-ventoy-or.html. 

2. Add check for RTC year each time E2B is loaded and warn user if year is bad. Indicates a flat CMOS battery.

3. In QRUN.g4b add user entry key C=CRC32 to calculate CRC32 of selected file.

4. In QRUN.g4b add secret QRUN dialogue user key ! so user can get to commandline for debugging at user prompt.

5. BugFix for .imgfdhd01 and other .img* extensions in QRUN.g4b - change QR bmp to easy2boot.xyz URL. Typically used for Win98.iso booting, etc.

A useful Windows System Information Utility for system repair, etc. (also runs under WinPE)

If you have booted to Windows PE (perhaps to automatically install Windows or you are running Strelec or HBCDPE) you may want to know certain things about the hardware in the system.

For instance, you may want to install Windows onto the SSD in the system, but Windows does not tell you which drive that is! 

You may need to install a special Mass Storage Disk driver so that you can access the hard disks within that system, but you don't know which Controller is in that system and hence which driver to install.

The developer of grubfm, A1ive, has made available on github a utility which you may find useful - called nwinfo.

There are both 32-bit and 64-bit versions available as well as a GUI version (gnwinfo) which can be run under Windows or WinPE. The CLI version (nwinfo) will run under WinPE and can display useful information.

K:\NWINFO>nwinfo_x64.exe /?

NWinfo CLI v0.9.5.0

Hardware information utility for Windows

Copyright (c) 2023 A1ive

Usage: nwinfo OPTIONS

OPTIONS:

  --format=FMT     Specify output format.

                   FMT can be 'YAML' (default), 'JSON' and 'LUA'.

  --output=FILE    Write to FILE instead of printing to screen.

  --cp=CODEPAGE    Set the code page of output text.

                   CODEPAGE can be 'ANSI' and 'UTF8'.

  --human          Display numbers in human readable format.

  --debug          Print debug info to stdout.

  --hide-sensitive Hide sensitive data (MAC & S/N).

  --sys            Print system info.

  --cpu            Print CPUID info.

  --net[=FLAG]     Print network info

                   FLAG can be 'ACTIVE' (print only the active network).

  --acpi[=SGN]     Print ACPI info.

                   SGN specifies the signature of the ACPI table,

                   e.g. 'FACP' (Fixed ACPI Description Table).

  --smbios[=TYPE]  Print SMBIOS info.

                   TYPE specifies the type of the SMBIOS table,

                   e.g. '2' (Base Board Information).

  --disk[=PATH]    Print disk info.

                   PATH specifies the path of the disk,

                   e.g. '\\.\PhysicalDrive0', '\\.\CdRom0'.

  --no-smart       Don't print disk S.M.A.R.T. info.

  --display        Print EDID info.

  --pci[=CLASS]    Print PCI info.

                   CLASS specifies the class code of pci devices,

                   e.g. '0C05' (SMBus).

  --usb            Print USB info.

  --spd            Print SPD info.

  --battery        Print battery info.

  --uefi           Print UEFI info.

  --shares         Print network mapped drives.

  --audio          Print audio devices.

Add Tetris.EFI to Easy2Boot or Ventoy

A1ive (the author of grubfm) has a UEFI project which allows you to UEFI64-boot and play Tetris.

You can Download the tetris.efi file

and add it to your E2B (e.g. \_ISO\MAINMENU folder) or Ventoy USB drive.

Then UEFI-boot to agFM or Ventoy and select the tetris.efi file to play Tetris.

Ventoy 1.0.97 is released - now add it to your E2B USB drive

You can create three different images of Ventoy for your Easy2Boot USB drive.

By selecting one of these images, you can convert your E2B USB drive into a fully compatible Ventoy USB drive.

Three Ventoy partition images listed in the agFM menu system - choose one.

After choosing an image, it will replace some partitions on the E2B drive and convert the USB drive into a Ventoy USB drive!

Computer errors in the UK Post Office Horizon scandal - a 'Smoking gun' and the mysterious Gareth Jenkins

Unless you have been living under a rock at the North Pole, you will have heard of the great Post Office scandal which involved bugs in the Horizon computer system devised by the UK's ICL computer company (bought by Fujitsu in 1998 and rebranded in 2002).

The problems were first highlighted by Computer Weekly in 2009 (approx 9 years after Horizon was rolled out to all branches).

As a result of these bugs and the Post Office, who contracted Fujitsu to provide the system, hundreds of well-respected, law abiding people were fined, convicted (many went to prison), spat at and vilified by the public, put into debt or bankrupted, lost their houses and were made virtually unemployable (unless they worked as an Uber driver!). Some even committed suicide (one unfortunate man was so depressed that he went to a busy road, waited for a bus to come down the road and then stepped out in front of it) - truly shocking.

'Getting started with Ventoy' eBook updated for Ventoy 1.0.96

 

Latest eBook (PDF) 'Getting started with Ventoy v1.15' is now available

Ventoy theme with semi-transparent Ventoy version number

I have updated the eBook for Ventoy v1.0.89.

If you have already purchased an older version of the PDF, just use the link in the confirmation email to download the new version of the PDF for free.

Free theme download

The Ventoy eBook contains many hints and tips such as how to make an external F6 user menu that can run grub and grub4dos commands (including how to use grub4dos paths/filenames with spaces) and how to make your own grub2 theme.

It also tells you how to easily remove the Ventoy version number text from your grub2 menu theme (no need for colour matching!).

I have also revised some of the other eBooks to bring them up to date.

Here is a list of the current versions, most have been updated within the last few months:

• E2B #1 - Getting started with Easy2Boot_v2.22.pdf
• E2B #2 - How to install Microsoft Windows using Easy2Boot_v1.9.pdf
• E2B #3 - How to make a UEFI multi-boot Easy2Boot USB drive using .imgPTN files v1.03.pdf
• E2B #4 - UEFI-multiboot using the a1ive grub2 File Manager_v1.26.pdf
• Getting started with Ventoy v1.15 (for Ventoy v1.0.96).pdf
• Getting started with grub4dos_v1.03.pdf
  

Just use the download link in your conformation email to download the latest version. All updates are free.

How to easily install Windows 11 without all the MS bloatware

There is currently a weird bug in the Windows 11 Setup procedure. When selecting the Language, Keyboard/Input Methods and Time/Currency, you can select either "English (World)" or "English (Europe)" as the region. If you choose one of these two options then the Microsoft operating system will be installed free of bloatware!

The reason for this is that the Windows 11 installer and Microsoft's Internet-based OOBE are apparently unable to handle the language code for World English (en-001) or European English (en-150).

So simply choose "English (World)" or "English (Europe)" and later, when installation has completed, change the Region to your correct region.

This bug will probably be fixed in 6 months or so, but in the meantime it is a useful trick!

Last day for Amazon Prime bargains!

Lots of other bargains too!

 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2  40% off !!!

Get ready for Amazon Prime Days now for great price reductions!

 Amazon Prime Days are 11th July and 12th July but you should get ready for them now.

First, you need to be an Amazon Prime member, but if you are not already a member, then take out a free month's subscription now (you can always cancel at the end of the month if you want to - but free delivery and Amazon Prime Video alone are worth the subscription for me!).

Next, get some items into your shopping basket now.

Here are some ideas (most links below are Amazon affiliate links which may earn me a few pennies but cost you nothing):

Ask ChatGPT for a Windows 10 Pro Microsoft Product Key for free!

If you ask ChatGPT nicely, it may give you a list of activation keys, some of which may be valid!

Of course, even though the key may activate, it is not safe or legal to use it because ChatGPT may actually be returning results of illegal or hacked keys! Just buy a legitimate OEM key for about $30 instead from eBay.

ChatGPT is totally untrustworthy, outdated and lies - but it is great for one thing...

Unless you have been living under a rock (one with no internet access) for the last 6 months, you will no doubt have heard of and tried ChatGPT.

It has some advantages, such as a spooky way of answering a question just like a really well-educated 'expert' - and some BIG disadvantages such as:

1. It doesn't know about anything after September 2021
   
2. You can't trust anything it says - it can totally make stuff up!

Add WinPE to your USB boot drive for Secure Boot

In some situations, you may need to UEFI Secure Boot to a multiboot USB drive such as a Ventoy or E2B USB drive. However, multiboot USB drives such as Ventoy and Easy2Boot, etc. do not fully support direct UEFI x86 64-bit Secure Booting because the \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI is not signed (and will never be signed because the code is by it's very nature insecure as it allows us to boot from all sorts of insecure ISOs, VHDs, IMG files, etc.).

You may often come across a system which has been set to Secure Boot and you may be unable to disable Secure Boot in the BIOS settings. Some solutions such a Ventoy will prompt you (via MokManager) to add a 'whitelist' certificate key for the insecure EFI boot file, however MokManager does not seem to run on many systems and even if it does, by adding a new key, you are making the target system insecure, so you must remember to remove the Ventoy key afterwards.

Get 20% off your website hosting fee with Hostinger

Valid until May 17th, if you sign up with Hostinger (#ad link) (use this link) as your website host, you can get 20% off and 3 months free.

If you are thinking about starting your own blog site, personal website, forum or business website, I recommend Hostinger. I use them for both easy2boot.xyz and rmprepusb.com. The plan allows me to host up to 100 sites at no extra cost.

There are plenty of videos on YouTube to help you and I have also produced a small free eBook on to get you started to produce a small business website (eBooks are here). There is also a 'How to make $1000 a month from the Internet' eBook which may be useful to you.

Hostinger offer excellent value for money and their support is also excellent too.

The only thing to be aware of is that although they offer a free domain name for the first year, you should be careful to look at the renewal costs of the domain name before choosing one - some are $10 a year but some other domain names can cost $50 a year. For instance, domains ending in .xyz tend to be much cheaper than domains ending in .com. Just check the renewal prices of both the package and the domain before you sign up with them. Hostinger renewal prices are pretty cheap anyway though (e.g. $6.99 a month), and unlike some other well known host providers I could name, they actually tell you the renewal costs quite plainly before you sign up!

Use just one keyboard and mouse with all your computers using free 'Barrier' github software

If you have several computers+displays or notebooks on your desk, it is a nuisance to have to reach over to another mouse or touchpad or keyboard when you want to use it.

'Barrier' is an OS application (for Windows 64-bit and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite+ and Linux) which allows you to control other computers from one 'main' computer.

Once you install the software on your 'main' computer (can be Windows or Linux or Mac) as the 'server', when you move the mouse cursor to the screen edge, the cursor will appear on the other computer screen and anything you type will go to the other computer instead of your 'main' computer. You can configure multiple computers - here I just have a Lenovo IdeaPad 300 physically located to the left of my main desktop PC screen, so I have configured the server so that when I move the cursor to the left-hand edge of the screen, it moves over to the IdeaPad 300...

press the 'Configure Server' button to arrange

Setup on Windows is quite simple:

How to view and edit your UEFI BIOS secure boot keys

The bootable UEFI tool KeyTool.efi can save your UEFI Secure Boot keys or allow you to edit them.

Download a 'LiveDVD' version of a Windows 11 ISO

NTDEV is the developer behind Tiny11, a slimmed down version of Windows 11 Pro which did not require a TPM and only needs 2GB of RAM, has now unveiled a new modified variant of Windows 11.

This is called Live11 (alpha): which is a live but cut-down version of Windows 11 22H2 64-bit which is loaded into memory. You can make a DVD from the ISO or legacy boot to it from Easy2Boot.

New Windows 10/11 UEFI bootkit can bypass Secure Boot!

The first in-the-wild UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot on a fully updated UEFI system is now a reality.

The vulnerability is mainly due to Microsoft not yet blocking a known security hole in the UEFI boot process (a new Microsoft OS KB update to fix the issue would be quite complicated and would have to change several key Microsoft boot files and the UEFI NVRAM dbx database, so it could cause Win10/11 systems to be non-bootable if the update process went wrong).

The BlackLotus exploit mechanism is explained in detail here and it is quite an interesting read if you want to gain a better understanding of how UEFI-booting, secure boot, etc. works and can be bypassed.

No doubt MS will provide a security patch via a KB update in due course...

Where have all the birds and insects gone - and should we care?

Anyone over 30 will probably have noticed (if they think about it) that there are a lot less insects, birds and other wildlife now than there used to be in the UK and Europe. 

When gardening now, I hardly ever find any insects these days and very rarely hear a bird sing (despite living in a small rural village), but when I was a boy, the skies were full of birds and the lawn and gardens were crawling with all sorts of insects.

I can remember driving at night when I was much younger (1980s) and always seeing hundreds of insects caught in the beam of the car headlights and they were also stuck to the windscreen of the car. These days, I am lucky if I see one moth on my windscreen in a month!

The weight of insects caught per trap per day in 63 nature reserves in Germany declined by 76% between 1989 and 2014, a decline which is, statistically speaking, highly unlikely to be due to chance (p<0.001) [Hallmann et al. 2017].

No one seems to care, but it is really very important for our health, our food production and our planet because we are not only killing all the wildlife on the planet but also the human race.

Add OpenCore to your Easy2Boot USB drive

E2B already includes Clover. You can UEFI64-boot to Partition 2 of the E2B USB drive and from the agFM menu you can browse to and run \EFI\CLOVER\CLOVERX64.EFI. The config.plist file in the \EFI\CLOVER folder will be used. Note that the config.plist file will be overwritten if you update agFM/E2B, so make a backup of it in the same folder if you need to edit it!

You can add the following grub2 menu entry to your \boot\grubfm\startup_menu.txt file if you want a menu entry in the agFM menu to be listed for Clover:

if $EFI64; then

if [ -f "(${user})/EFI/CLOVER/CLOVERX64.EFI" ] ; then

menuentry "Clover (UEFI64)" --class=settings {

set grubfm_file="(${user})/EFI/CLOVER/CLOVERX64.EFI"

grubfm_open "${grubfm_file}"

}

fi

fi

OpenCore is similar to Clover and is highly hardware dependent. The config.plist needs to be correct for your particular target PC and it is not trivial to set up (see Guide here).

However, if you want to boot to the OpenCore boot loader from an E2B USB drive you must add the OpenCore files as follows:

1. Copy the EFI\OC folder to Partition 2 (which should be FAT32) at \EFI\OC

2. Copy the \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI file from your OC source to the same \EFI\OC folder on Partition 2

3. Add your \EFI\OC\config.plist file (edit as required)

UEFI64 boot to the E2B agFM menu and browse to the \EFI\OC\BOOTX64.EFI file on Partition 2 and select it and press ENTER key.

If you are using your own startup menu, you can add the following entry into the \boot\grubfm\startup_menu.txt file:

if $EFI64; then
if [ -f "(${user})/EFI/OC/BOOTX64.EFI" ] ; then
menuentry "OpenCore (UEFI64)" --class=settings {
set grubfm_file="(${user})/EFI/OC/BOOTX64.EFI"
grubfm_open "${grubfm_file}"
}
fi
fi

https://easy2boot.xyz/create-your-website-with-blocks/add-payload-files/opencore/

New Windows Update for XP

If have tried to install XP recently, you may have experienced some difficulties!

It is no longer supported by Microsoft and many things no longer work.

You should start off by installing XP using the latest install ISO that you can find (preferably a 'legal' unactivated/unhacked) one. 

New money saving tips eBook (PDF)

This 39 page eBook (PDF format) contains many of the money saving tips that I use every day (well most of them anyway :-) as well as some crafty tricks. For instance, I get £60 off my normal supermarket shopping bill every month using a simple trick to get £15 money-off vouchers every week. It can be used with other retail stores too and should work in most countries, not just the UK.

It also contains some heating/energy tips too as well as many other tips for other savings. 

You may be familiar with some of these tips already, but even if you only actually use just one of  them you will have saved the cost of the eBook!

It is currently on SALE at just $1 for two weeks only (normally $5).

Steve's Money-Saving Tips for 2023 (39pp.)

Anyone can make a small business website in 2 hours (free PDF eBook)

Help - my kitchen ceiling is leaking!

I recently hired a plumber because there was water dripping from my kitchen ceiling and I couldn't find the source!

So I used Google to search for a local emergency plumber (it was a Saturday!) and I found four in my area that had websites. So I went to their websites to check them out and then called all of them at around 8 a.m. on the Saturday morning but my messages went to their answerphone service and no one has called me back since.

Try the new Rescue WinPE from AIOBoot

I just found a interesting new WinPE which consists of a .wim file and a VHD here from the developer of AIOBoot.

It seems to work for Legacy 64-bit and UEFI64 systems. Place the two files in the correct locations as instructed:

\_ISO\WINPE\Win10PE_x64_Boot.wim

\AIO\WinPE\Win10PE_x64_Data.vhd

It claims to be semi-persistent as the “Program Files”, “ProgramData” and “Users” folders in drive X: are moved to drive Y: and data written to these folders and Y: drive will be saved.

Personal settings, time zone, country and region, region format, desktop shortcuts, etc. are also saved.

Desktop shortcuts, pinned apps on the Taskbar, recently used apps are also saved.

It seems to have a few issues with localisaton, etc. and Papps requires network access, etc. but it is an interesting approach as you can install files and programs to the VHD.

Run grub4dos commands from the Ventoy (or any grub2) menu system

Ventoy is based on grub2 and although it is very good at booting most legacy payloads, it is not that good at booting some DOS floppy images and some other legacy BIOS payloads.

If you need to boot using grub4dos, you can define your own grub2 external user menu (\ventoy\ventoy_grub.cfg) which can be run from Ventoy by pressing F6 in the Ventoy menu system.

My eBook 'Getting started with Ventoy' gives a few examples of how to do this.

Easy2Boot v2.19 released

Changes to E2B v2.19 (Jan 2 2023 version):

• New grub4dos /grldr to fix changing wallpaper bmp/jpg whilst animation is running in background.
• Revise E2B Launcher.exe to add ‘Download and Update E2B’.
• Update some files - hotkey utility, Add_Ventoy.cmd, CheckForUpdate.cmd, CreatePersistentFile.sh,Download and Update E2B.cmd also tells user which version is installed on USB drive.
• Add new INDONESIAN menu language (thanks to mikail)
• Add ‘+DPMS’ or ‘ – No DPMS’ to default MAIN MENU heading so user can tell which version is installed.
• Add “\_ISO\docs\E2B Utilities\GetWindowsProductKey.vbs” – run this to get the current Windows system Product Key.

Formatting, copying and writing floppy disks

Personally, I have not used a floppy disk in over 15 years, but if you are into retro computers and still use them, then you must check out this excellent Adrian's Digital Basement YT video:

In the video, he describes how to use the DOS ImageDisk program to test, read and write all sorts of  floppy disks.