Problems installing Ubuntu x64 UEFI in Virtual Box

I have been trying to compile my own grub2 boot code files (core.img and bootx64.efi) recently.

To do this, I needed to set up a VM with Ubuntu x64 in UEFI-mode.

Easy right?

Err.... no!

E2B v1.84 released

E2B v.1.84 full version is released.

Changes from v1.84c beta are:

• official grub4dos 2016-09-20 release (should be similar to the test version in 1.84c)
• Some more Download URL links added to \_ISO\docs folder
• Cub Linux + persistence Sample Mnu File added.

The 'SultryWoman' bitmap and MyE2B.cfg file are available
from the Alternate Downloads - Themes area.

Changes since v1.83 are:

RMPrepUSB v2.1.733 (Beta status) available - with grub2 USB drive installer

RMPrepUSB v2.1.733 changes are:

• Latest grub4dos 0.4.6a 2016-09-20 (grldr)
• Can install grub2 to MBR via BootLoaders tab
• FAT32 partitions now start at LBA 2048 instead of LBA63 (RMPartUSB v2.1.733)

You can now install grub2 boot code onto the first sectors of a USB drive.

UEFI_GRUB2_PTN2_Beta4 available

UEFI_GRUB2_PTN2_Beta4 has a few small bug fixes to some .grub2 files and the grub2 menu entries have been tweaked slightly so that the text in the menus aligns better.
I have also changed the Excel spreadsheet slightly.
The main changes in .grub2 has been around the naming of kali isos.
If you already have the Beta3 version on your E2B drive, instructions on how to update to a later version are here.

If you use the Grub2 menu system with E2B, please let me know. I have had very little feedback about it and so it is still in Beta status. If I get reports that people are using it successfully, then I will officially 'release' it.

The downloads are in the Alternate Download Areas - Other Files folder.

Registry fragment to prevent creation of System Volume Information folder

For Windows 8/10, you can add a Registry fragment that will stop Windows from creating a System Volume Information folder on all your USB drives.

The download is available from the Alternate Download Area - Other Files folder (direct link here).

I will also include the registry fragment in E2B v1.84 in the folder:
\_ISO\docs\E2B Utilities\Disable_System_Volume_Information_Folder_Creation.

Note: In recent versions of Windows 10, as well as the Registry Fragment, you need to stop (disable) the Storage Service too (type Services into the start menu to find the management applet).
For more info, see my previous blog here (the Take Ownership reg tweak is really useful too!).

FYI: The top three posts in my entire blog are:

1. A faster test for fake SD cards and USB Flash drives (*more popular by a factor of x10!)
2. Deleting the 'System Volume Information' folder from a USB drive (and other system files\folders)
3. Add Microsoft ERD Commander and MSDart Windows Recovery ISOs to Easy2Boot

Please tick one of the 'Reactions' boxes if you enjoyed a post.

Chromium OS (Cub Linux) with persistence

Cub Linux is Chromium+Ubuntu. Unlike ChromixiumOS, it comes in a nice LiveCD ISO format and so we can easily run this from an E2B drive. As it is based on Ubuntu, we can also add persistence.

Here is the .mnu for the 64-bit version (also added to \_ISO\docs\Sample mnu Files\linux\CubLinux-amd64_Persistent.mnu in E2B v1.84d).

Once you cancel your credit/debit card, it cannot be used again, right?... WRONG!

OK, this is nothing to do with USB drives (but you might use a card to buy a USB drive...;-)

So you lose your credit or debit card (or it is stolen). You contact the bank and they cancel it and issue you a new card. You check your next card statement at the end of the month and it looks OK. Panic over and you are safe, right?

WRONG! Actually someone could use your old card for months afterwards by using it for multiple 'contactless payments'. You could lose £100s.

How to overlay the E2B F1 Help text onto your wallpaper background

The E2B F1 Help menu is determined by the F1.cfg file, one for each language.

When you select one of the Help menu topics, the text is displayed on a plain (usually black) background. This is because the help text fills the whole screen and may get confused with the background picture in some situations (as you can see in the example below).

You can modify the F1.cfg file so that the text is overlaid on top of the current wallpaper by adding a few lines under each 'title' menu entry.

You can download the E2B v1.83 English F1.cfg file which includes these lines in all 'title' menu entries from the Alternate Download Area - Languages folder here.

You can quickly test it by adding the F1.cfg file to the \_ISO folder (but don't leave it there because it will override any language setting or normal F1.cfg file - if you want to use it permanently, make a new language folder). For more info about the F1 help menu and making a new language folder, see here and here.

P.S. The wallpaper shown above is called 'SultryWoman' and is in the  Alternate Download Area - Themes folder here. There are other wallpapers in the Themes folder too or you can download more from https://wall.alphacoders.com/  (choose 4:3 format and then reduce them to 800x600 using Paint and save as .bmp).

E2B v1.84c Beta available

v1.84c 

1. Parrot+persistence sample .mnu file added. 
2. New feature: if user presses u key during early booting to Main menu, the grub4dos USB 2.0 driver will be loaded. 
3. Change to SDI_CHOCO Sample_MyStartup.cmd so that -y and unchecksummed packages are accepted. 
4. Add 'Download URLs' folder to \_ISO\docs\ folder. 
5. Add Win7 SDI_CHOCO XML files. 
6. Fix SDI_CHOCO.cmd so does not pause if installing Win7. 
7. Add E2B_WINHELPER_&DW.zip for Zalman\IODD. 
8. Fix problem of F1 Help menu title not displayed (all languages). 
9. Sample WinNTSetup diskpart script files added to \_ISO\docs\E2B Utilities\WinNTSetup folder
10. Fix bug - if animated icon in menu, then XP+DPMS install is broken (asks for floppy disk).

I have found that if you have an animated E2B icon (or any animated icon) on the menu, this causes the installation of XP+DPMS to fail. Setup will prompt you to insert a Firadisk floppy disk and you cannot get beyond this point.
This was caused by the animated .bmp files being loaded as a virtual floppy (fd3) which interferes with the two other virtual floppies used by DPMS. This bug is fixed in this v1.84c Beta version.

Using a combination of WinNTSetup and DPMS, it is possible (I think!) to install XP onto a system that contains only USB 3.0 ports and a SATA or RAID HDD (from an unmodified MS XP SP3 ISO). The system's firmware/hardware needs to be XP-compatible however (many modern BIOSes are not).  The process is a bit messy though! See http://www.easy2boot.com/add-payload-files/windows-install-isos/winntsetup/ for more details.

The file E2B_WINHELPER_&DW.zip contains E2B_WINHELPER_&DW.RMD. This file can be loaded by a Zalman or IODD drive so that it will appear as a E2B 'Helper' Removable Flash drive. This means you do not need to carry a separate Flash drive with your Zalman/IODD drive.

How to set up multiple backgrounds in E2B (video by Liu Evan)

A guy named Liu Evan has posted a YouTube video on how to make wallpaper backgrounds and how to have a different background for each E2B menu.

He has also made some background templates available for you to download, so you can create a 'semi-transparent' square and merge it with the background bitmap using PhotoShop (though I guess you could use gimp or Paint .Net too) on which the E2B menu can be written, as shown below.

The E2B page which describes how to set up multiple backgrounds is here.

Free Paragon Backup and Recovery 16 (until Nov 2016)

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/brh/download.html

You can build a WinPE Recovery ISO using this too (to get the ISO creation option you need to install MS WAIK WinPE support).

Original source DavesComputerTips.

Change the WinPE console font/size/position/minimize/hide, using the SetConsole utility

When running scripts, etc. using the Windows console terminal window, you often want to change it's appearance. To change the size of the window, we can use a command such as:

mode con: cols=160 lines=60

However, changing the font that is used, especially if running WinPE, is a lot more tricky, especially as we cannot reboot after changing the registry.

Whilst looking for a solution, I found the handy SetConsole utility.

Easy2Boot v1.84a Beta available

Beta v1.84a

• Parrot+persistence sample .mnu file added. 
• New feature: If user presses u key early when booting to E2B, the grub4dos USB 2.0 driver will be automatically loaded. 
• Add 'Download LiveCDs' url + some others to a new \_ISO\docs\Download URLs folder. 
• Change to SDI_CHOCO Sample_MyStartup.cmd so that -y not required and unchecksummed packages are accepted. 
• Add Win7 SDI_CHOCO XML files. 
• Fix SDI_CHOCO.cmd so does not pause if installing Win7. 
• Add E2B_WINHELPER_&DW.zip for Zalman\IODD.

The Download LiveCDs.url points to a convenient web page where you can quickly find many liveCDs.

I have now tested SDI_CHOCO with Win7 and made a few tweaks as well as adding some XML files for Win7.

Note that Chocolatey automatically installs DotNet4 (which takes 10-20 minutes!) on Win7.

It seems Chocolatey now requires the packages to be checksummed and many are not. I have added some configuration lines into the Sample_MyStartup.cmd file which disables this checksum requirement and also added an option so that -y is not required (so just choco teamviewer will work automatically). if you already have a MyStartup.cmd file, you will need to add in these lines.

If you have a IOD2531 or 2541, you can load the E2B_WINHELPER_&DW.RMD file into it, and it will emulate a WINHELPER E2B USB Removable media flash drive (cool!). See my previous blog for details. If anyone owns a Zalman disk caddy, please try this file and let me know if the whole hard disk is write-enabled after it is loaded and what model/firmware you tested it on (the HDD is write-protected on the VE200, which is no good for E2B!).

Using E2B with Zalman\IODD disk drive enclosures (is the IODD 2531 the best USB HDD enclosure for E2B?)

As you know, E2B keeps its menu folders under the \_ISO folder.

The folder name of \_ISO was not a random decision on my part, it was chosen because the drive emulation disk enclosures made by IODD and Zalman both use the \_ISO folder to store payload files.

Keep reading to see how you can use the features of these devices to enhance E2B!

For those of you that don't know, with these HDD enclosures, you can select one or more payload files, and they will be emulated as a USB device.

Zalman ZM-VE200


For instance, if you select Ubuntu.iso, then any system that the HDD enclosure is connected to, will 'see' a USB CD/DVD drive containing the Ubuntu ISO file contents, just as if it were accessing a real CD/DVD drive containing a real CD\DVD (except much faster)!

Now, I recently purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad 300, and decided to try my old Zalman ZM-VE200 out on it. I found that IdeaPad 300 did not respond too well when trying to boot from an ISO loaded as a virtual CD into the Zalman VE200. It looked like the Zalman could not load the ISO quickly enough on power-on, so the IdeaPad BIOS did not detect it (even when using an SSD HDD).

Since the Zalman ZM-VE200 is USB 2.0 and therefore not very fast, and also had this issue, I decided to purchase a new emulation HDD enclosure. My choices were:

Unencrypted - IODD 2531 (SATA3) or Zalman VE300 (SATA2) or Zalman VE350 (SATA3 compatible)
Encrypted     - IODD 2541 (SATA3) or Zalman VE400 (SATA2) or Zalman VE500 (SATA3 compatible)

I have read some Amazon reviews that the Zalman VE350 is a poorer-quality version of the VE300 and the VE500 is a poorer-quality version of the VE400 as they are made by a different manufacturer (not IODD). The Zalman documentation is poor. It does not mention support for VHD, RMD, DSK for instance even though I think they are supported by the Zalmans.

Install Windows for UEFI booting from E2B in MBR mode (using WinNTSetup)

If you have an E2B USB hard disk and you want to install Windows onto a UEFI-system, it can be a bit of a pain the make the .imgPTN file and get it working. Especially if you want to use SDI_CHOCO.

However, you can install Windows from an E2B USB drive using WinNTSetup by JFX. This way you do not need to modify the ISO or create a .imgPTN file or modify the boot.wim files, etc. to perform a UEFI\GPT installation. Also a WinHelper USB Flash drive is not required.

This means you can boot from a Win8/10 Windows Install or WinPE ISO and then use WinNTSetup to install Windows from any ISO on the E2B drive.

• There is no need to UEFI-boot from the E2B USB drive
• No modification of ISOs required
• No .imgPTN file or modification of boot.wim is required
• No WinHelper USB Flash drive required
• You can use SDI_CHOCO XML files

There are many videos on YouTube about WinNTSetup, if you want to see it in action. You can even boot to one of the DLC WinPE ISOs which already contains WinNTSetup, instead of booting from a Windows Install ISO.

Tip: JFX has revised v3.8.7 Beta 4 so that you can run diskpart scripts using CTRL+SHIFT+D (see tools\diskpart folder).

For instructions see the WinNTSetup page on the E2B site here.

A persistent parrot

Kevin asked me how to add persistence for Parrot linux.

Parrot speaks to you when it loads!

Since  this is based on Ubuntu, I simply modified the Ubuntu_2016_Persistence.mnu file.

I have added a copy of Parrot_3.1.1_Persistent.mnu to the Alternate Downloads Area - mnu files - linux folder, if you want it.

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?