Add a full installation of Solus to E2B

Max wanted to have a full persistent installation of Solus on his E2B drive.

You can do a full installation of many linux OS's to an empty .imgPTN file following this method.
The same method is also described here for Manjaro linux.

For Solus, after I switched in the new partition images (solus.imgPTN and a 10GB solus file with no extension), I just choose to install to /  on /dev/sda3 and format it as ext4 (no swap partition). I used a 10GB solus file which left 6GB free after installing Solus.

However, when using the Solus 1.2.1 ISO to install with, the Solus installer does not offer the choice of the /dev/sda3 partition to install the grub2 boot loader. It is either \dev\sda  (the E2B USB MBR!) or nothing.

Here is how to get around this...

New RansomWare software (Cybereason RansomFree) - but there is a catch which you may not like!

This new free Cybereason RansomFree software detects ransomware using the 'honeypot' technique.

It seems to create new folders that begin with { or ~{ and other strange characters, and then fills those folders with various  'tempting' .doc,  .txt, .rtf, .xls etc. files. It then monitors them for changes and will allow you to kill any task that attempts to makes any changes to any those files.

A nice touch (or weakness?) is that the honeypot files that it creates are mostly hidden from the normal user when using Windows Explorer to view your folders.

The honeypot theory assumes that any ransomware will scan the drive and find these files before it finds your important files and then the RansomFree software will be able to warn you before too much harm is done. It did not seem to place any honeypot files on any other volume in my system however, so it seems to be only monitoring the C: drive.

See YouTube video here.

It has been tested and reviewed by Bleeping Computers also.

But here's the catch...

Add the NirLauncher utility to your E2B USB drive to launch portable NirSoft utilities + others

NirSoft make lots of very useful Windows utilities, most of which are portable.

Use the NirSoft NirLauncher to quickly select a suitable NirSoft utility.

The NirLauncher utility allows you to run any of the 200+ portable utilities from a USB drive.

New YouTube video on how to make an Unattend.xml file

E2B contains a few example Unattend.xml files which can be used with unmodified Windows ISOs and a USB Flash drive to perform a completely hands-free automated Windows install.

The video explains how to prepare your own XML file quickly with your own settings using WAFG and XMLtoE2B.

Yesterday I built an Amazon Echo 'Skill' for E2B

I was asked by my family what I wanted for Christmas recently. As I was considering buying an Amazon Echo for myself, I suggested that I could order one for them to give to me.

It arrived a few days ago and like a naughty child, I opened my XMas present early and I have since been talking to 'Alexa' - with varying degrees of success (and frustration)!

I saw a video on YouTube about how to create a 'Skill' for the Amazon Echo (equivalent of a mobile phone app) and so yesterday, I decided to have a go.

I won't describe how I did it in detail, because there are many videos and other tutorials around which tell you how to do it.

I decided to try a simple Skill for Easy2Boot: e.g.

"Alexa, ask Easy2Boot Helper how to add ubuntu"

Here is how I got on...

ChrisR WinBuilder Win10PESE 2016-12-08 available

ChrisR has been supplying WinBuilder downloads for WinPE7/8/10 for some time now.

You can use WinBuilder to make a 32-bit or 64-bit WinPE ISO complete with many tools and even add your own utilities too. Most have WoW64 support in the x64 versions so you can run 32-bit apps under 64-bit WinPE.

The WinPE 10 WinBuilder version can be downloaded from here.

RMPrepUSB Tutorial #100 shows how to use WinBuilder and can be found here.

You can build a dual-boot USB drive which will UEFI-boot using either 32-bit or 64-bit UEFI (Secure Boot and MBR) systems by following the RMPrepUSB Tutorial #127 here. Note that some UEFI-systems may not MBR-boot from such a USB drive however - they will always UEFI-boot!

If you want to boot WinBuilder-based ISOs from E2B, you will need to read this Easy2Boot page. The easiest way to boot numerous WinBuilder-based payloads is to convert each one to a .imgPTN file for both UEFI and MBR booting, however you can MBR-boot directly from each ISO if you keep the file extension as .ISO and don't use spaces in the filename (E2B v1.92+). If you see a Yellow Triangle! on the Desktop, then it didn't work correctly! Read my previous blog on how to add multiple different WinBuilder ISOs to E2B.

E2B v.1.87 is now released

Changes from v1.86 are:

• Fix typo in SDI_CHOCO which caused pause with scrolllock.exe and capslock.exe error messages. 
• Improve linux fmt.sh scripts to install grub4dos to PBR and make partition active using parted. 
• Latest grub4dos 0.4.6a. 
• Snappy updated to R513. 
• Persistent sample .mnu files added for LibreELEC and Pentoo. 
• Win10 support added to PassPass (thanks to Ner0). 
• Improved Restore File check in PPass.g4b to prevent restoring wrong file+improve search speed.
• Other small tweaks

Download page

YouTube video on PassPass for E2B

YouTube Video on the E2B_Editor now available

See http://www.easy2boot.com/configuring-e2b/e2b-editor/  (refresh the page if you don't see a video at the top of the page).

Tip: use the gear wheel speed control and set x2 if you find yourself falling asleep!

E2B v1.87e Beta available

1.87e Beta has a few more tweaks to PassPass to make it quicker when searching for Windows OS's.
I hope to release this version as 1.87 after a few days, so please report any issues if you find any.