Alternate German menu format

The German language files (supplied by Frettt) in E2B have been formatted so that the [hotkey] labels are right-aligned in the menus...

A few people have requested a left-aligned German menu, so Frettt has now provided an alternate STRINGS.txt file which left-aligns the hotkeys.

Petya disk encryption fix

I see on BleepingComputer.com that there is a way to decrypt a hard disk that has been encrypted with the Petya malware (actually, I think only the $MFT is encrypted by this MBR virus). Although Bleeping Computer say to remove the hard disk from the system, I don't see why we cannot just boot the infected system to WinPE from a USB drive (just be careful it does not boot from the internal hard disk!).

I copied the PetyaExtractor.exe program to my E2B USB drive and booted to a Windows 10 32-bit Install ISO. I then ran the PetyaExtractor.exe program which appeared to run OK (but I cannot be sure as I did not have an infected system). It is a 32-bit program, so you need to boot to 32-bit WinPE (or a 64-bit WinPE that has WoW64 support - e.g. ChrisR's WinPESE10).

The idea is that we could then save the sector 55 and 'Nonce' data from sector 54 to the E2B drive using NotePad, and then copy and paste it into the Petya Decrypting site page to get the decryption key.

It also would be trivial to write a grub4dos (E2B) script to save the required data (or even just use dd) and then encode it to base64 by uploading it to a website such as this one. However, it is probably just as easy to just boot to WinPE and use the PetyaExtractor tool.

Why not add the tool and a .txt file with the web links to your 'Swiss-army E2B drive' so that you will have the tool handy if you need to fix someone's system?

30 things I bet you didn't know about Easy2Boot (or were too afraid to ask)!

1. E2B can directly boot from Vista/7/8/10 WindowsToGo .VHD files - just copy them over (requires a copy of Win8.1 bootmgr to be added to the E2B drive - no BCD file is required!).

FASTLOAD bug in E2B v1.79

If you use Windows Install ISOs with E2B v1.79 and have FASTLOAD enabled, you may find that the Windows Install menu options are not present in the Main menu. This is caused by a missing line in the \_ISO\e2b\grub\menu.lst file (it somehow got accidentally removed!).

Please try E2B v1.80h or later if this problem affects you.

I don't use FASTLOAD much because I prefer to use fast USB 3.0 drives (well, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!).   ;-)

Find that file!

If you boot to WinPE or WindowsToGo from E2B to try to fix a Windows system, it is really very useful to keep a copy of SwiftSearch.exe on the E2B USB drive.

SwiftSearch.exe is a standalone 32-bit Windows executable which will very quickly find any file (you can use wildcards in any combination) on any NTFS volume in the whole system (including NTFS USB drives). And when I say 'quick', I mean really quick, like a few seconds for a full 2TB drive, because it directly accesses the $MFT of the NTFS drive! It only works on NTFS volumes however and will not search FAT or exFAT volumes.

5 volumes (approx. 2TB) searched in 0.41 seconds (including my NTFS USB drives)!

Using E2B with the Netac U618 Encrypted USB 2.0 Flash drive

The Netac U618 is similar to the iStorage datAshur USB flash drives in that it has a PIN keypad and stores it's data in an encrypted form.

I believe the 16GB version is split as 4GB Public + 10GB Secure, however, I tested the 32GB version. You can obtain them from Amazon or eBay (approx $30 or £23 for the 32GB version).

E2B v1.79 available (and now officially released)

v1.79 is now released.

Changes from v1.78C are:

• New NOWINXP parameter to suppress some menu items in the Windows Install menu.
• Small bugfix in AUTOMN.g4b (sometimes listed files with no extension)
• Improved Protect.cmd to show more file info. 
• Bug fixes for bad error handling in QRUN.g4b (did not abort if error). 
• E2B_Editor.exe v1.0.85 (NOSUG and NOWINXP options added). 
• Improve robocopy detection for XP systems in UPDATE_E2B_USB_DRIVE.cmd.

Note: Small bug in v1.79 - if you use FASTLOAD and Win Install ISOs, use v1.80!

Add PepperMint 6 + persistence to E2B

PepperMint 6 can be booted as a 'LiveCD' from ISO with persistence.
Britec has a YouTube video on how to install it as an OS.

However, we can run it from an ISO file with persistence from E2B too using a .mnu file.
It is based on Ubuntu and so uses a casper-rw persistence file.

How to increase the spacing between all E2B menu entries

grub4dos allows you to adjust the character and line spacing of text.

One of the template .cfg files in E2B demonstrates this:(\_ISO\docs\Templates\StripedFlat_pwd_is_fred)

The Sample_MyE2B.cfg file shows you how you can alter these, using the lnspace and wdspace parameters:

The default value is 'n' (or 0) for lnspace and wdspace.

Here is a 14-entry menu using the default spacing:

E2B v.79f available and 'E2B.cfg is MISSING!' error

I found some error handling issues in QRUN.g4b (v1.77 and 1.78C). The problem centres around this kind of grub4dos code...

if not "%X%"="1" pause ERROR && configfile (md)0xa000+0x50