Booting USB drives using Virtual Box (VMUB tip)

In case anyone is still living in the Stone Age and is using QEMU to test their bootable USB drives, this is just a short blog to make sure you are aware of DavidB's utility VMUB (Virtual Machine USB Booter) for use with Oracle Virtual Box.

I wrote a previous blog about it here. There is also a YouTube video.

I use VMUB all the time because it is much quicker than using QEMU and it can boot a variety of different Virtual Machines (including MBR 64-bit, UEFI 32-bit and 64-bit booting).

The VMUB utility gives much better results than using a manually created .vmdk file for your USB drive because VMUB also dismounts the USB drive before running VBOX. This eliminates some of the problems that you get when using a simple .vmdk file with VBOX.

VMUB tip (use the CTRL key)

If you are designing and testing a new menu system for E2B (or making a custom CSM menu for .imgPTN files) then here is a handy tip:

E2B v1.83 released

• Bugfix for grub4dos so does not absorb key presses before menu is displayed. 
• Make_E2B_USB_Drive (run as admin).cmd now checks for more versions of bootmgr (whitelist has new additions). 
• Warning message if try to use .imz file extension (you need to convert to .ima). 
• Added sample .mnu files for Remix OS x86 with persistence (thanks Sergio!). 
• Small changes to German language files (thanks Frettt). 
• Add fmt_ntfs.sh script and udefrag utility to docs\linux_utils folder - can now make and maintain an NTFS E2B drive under linux. 
• Update FreeDOS floppy image to allow access to NTFS files under FreeDOS (E2B drive = C: ). 
• Updated SDI 'Snappy' executables.

Available on website or Alternate Download Areas.

E2B v1.83d Beta now available

Version 1.83d is a 'Release Candidate'.

Please let me know if you spot any issues ASAP. I will probably release it as v1.83 release version in a few days.

Are fingerprint sensors really secure?

Many years ago when fingerprint sensors first started to appear on the market, it seemed a really useful security feature.

The company I worked for (RM plc) made PCs, notebooks and tablets for schools. The use of passwords was a common problem in schools. The password needed to be long enough and complex enough to be secure, but also easy to remember. Also, the crafty kids would often watch a teacher type in their password and so learn their admin password. The kids would also forget their passwords, which meant that teachers or the IT admin guys were constantly having to reset their passwords and create new ones for them. Kids would write down their password and other kids could find them and copy their homework, etc. Passwords were a real headache.

So fingerprint scanners seemed to present an ideal solution and as everyone's fingerprint is unique - so it is foolproof, right?

Windows command line TAB auto-completion tip

I came across this tip yesterday. You can specify a file using wildcards and then use TAB auto-completion in a Windows command shell.

For instance:

If you are working at the Windows cmd shell and want to edit a .txt file (for instance), type

notepad *.txt

You can now press the TAB key until you see the file you want.

This works with more complex wildcards to such as  p*.t* and with network shares too.

RMPrepUSB v2.1.732 now available

I have updated RMPrepUSB to use the new version of mke2fs. It now asks you to specify  ext2, ext3 or ext4 format when you use the Create Ext2/3/4 FS button.

This makes it more convenient to create ext3 or ext4 files. I will remove the mke2fs files from Easy2Boot as there is no need for them now.

For persistence files with E2B, I recommend ext3 because ext2 files can become easily corrupted. I suggest you avoid ext4 because grub4dos may not be fully compatible with ext4 and I don't think there is much advantage over ext3 (but I might be wrong!).

Download here.

E2B v1.83c Beta available

v1.83c - changes from 1.83a in bold

• bugfix grub4dos 0.4.6a so does not absorb key presses before menu is displayed. 
• Make_E2B_USB_Drive (run as admin).cmd now checks for more versions of bootmgr (whitelist has new additions). 
• Warning message if try to use .imz file extension (need to convert to .ima).
• Add \_ISO\docs\E2B Utilities\Format_as_ext3_or_ext4 folder for re-formatting ext2 persistence files as ext3 or ext4 under Windows. (removed from 1.83 release version)
• Add sample .mnu files for Remix OS x86 with persistence (thanks Sergio!). 
• Small changes to German language files (thanks Frettt). 
• Add fmt_ntfs.sh script and udefrag utility to docs\linux_utils folder - can now make and maintain an NTFS E2B drive under linux.

Note that I have discovered (thanks to a post by Shiv Manas on Google+) that the udefrag linux utility will make files on an E2B USB drive contiguous (provided you have enough free space on the drive). This means that linux users can make and maintain an NTFS E2B USB drive. See ReadMe file in the linux_utils folder for more details.

E2B v1.83a Beta available

v1.83a 

• bugfix grub4dos 0.4.6a so does not absorb key presses before menu is displayed. 
• Make_E2B_USB_Drive (run as admin).cmd now checks for more versions of bootmgr (whitelist has new additions). 
• Warning message if try to use .imz file extension (need to convert to .ima).

Available from Alternate Download Areas as usual.

Anyone tried the SDI_CHOCO feature yet?

Convenient way to run MS-DOS utilities directly from an NTFS E2B drive

If you have several different DOS utilities (to flash a BIOS perhaps or run a DOS-based diagnostic) which are provided as .exe or .com files, then you may have trouble adding it to an NTFS E2B USB drive.

Usually, you would have to make a DOS-bootable floppy disk image or perhaps make a bootable USB flash drive and then 'capture' the flash drive as a FAT32 .imgPTN file using the MPI Tool Kit (MakePartImage). Actually, E2B will try to boot to IO.sys or Kernel.sys, so you do not have to 'SYS' the floppy image, just ensure that the correct boot files are present inside the image file.

Today, I found some DOS floppy disk images which contained NTFS drivers on a Russian site (www.bootdisk.com seems to not provide free downloads any more). This means that all you have to do, is copy your DOS utilities to a new folder on your NTFS E2B USB drive, boot to the floppy disk image and then run the DOS utility straight from the NTFS E2B drive.

Note: The FreeDOS floppy image included with E2B v1.83+ now includes a DOS NTFS driver, so you can access an NTFS E2B USB drive as drive C:. Because FreeDOS is used and not MS-DOS 8.0 however, long filenames are not displayed correctly and so it is not quite as good as the DOS4NTFS.IMZ image.

Add a 'factory' recovery partition using Aomei One Key Recovery

Whilst looking at the Aomei Backupper utility (horrible name!) in a previous blog, I saw the free Aomei One Key Recovery product on the Aomei website and decided to try it today.

The website has a lot of 'Chinglish' sales talk and very little information about how it works. Here are the main points for you techies!...