Can't boot to Windows but need some important files?

Scenario

• You are given a Windows computer which will not boot to Windows any more.
• You have tried to boot to Recovery Media/ISO and repair it, but it did not work.
• The NTFS filesystem and memory seem to be OK (you ran memory test and chkdsk).
• The issue seems to be that the Windows OS is broken.
• The internal hard disk is pretty full, so you cannot install a second copy of Windows as there is not enough free file space.
• The customer wants only a small number of certain important files recovered from the hard disk, but he doesn't know exactly where they were stored. The customer does remember a bit of the file name as does know that he used MS Word to edit the documents.

Your Mission (should you decide to accept it), is to backup those important files to an offline USB drive before you start messing around with the customers OS or the files on his hard disk.

Discussion

At this point, you could decide to take an image of the internal hard disk using any decent backup package. This is a very sensible thing to do, but it will take a while.

Install proxmox v4 from E2B

After a LOT of problems, I have managed to work out how to install the later versions of proxmox from E2B direct from the ISO file.

You will need to make a .mnu file.

See the bottom of this old post for details.

E2B v1.92 officially released

v.1.92 is now officially released.

Changes are listed here.

Add a BitLocker encrypted Windows 10 To Go OS to Easy2Boot

Windows 10 1703 (Build 15063) or later will mount all formatted partitions of a USB Removable media Flash drive.

This means we can not only boot from a flat-file installation of Windows 10 now, but because we can create a multi-partition USB flash drive, we can also encrypt the Windows volume using BitLocker.

Windows 10 will allow us to MBR-boot (not UEFI-boot) to an encrypted volume either by entering a short password (e.g. 8 characters or more) or by inserting a USB flash drive containing a .BEK key file for the encrypted volume.

E2B v1.92l and MPI Tool Pack 074 now available

I am hoping to release this as v1.92 Full Release version in a few days!

Includes latest grub4dos 0.4.6a (hopefully with all bugs fixed!).

MPI v0.074 has improved detection of the isolinux version.

Alternate OneDrive Download Area

Adding the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key to E2B

The HP Vision Diagnostics ISO can be added to an E2B Removable USB drive if you use the .ISOPE01 file extension. It will boot straight to WinPE and you should briefly see the blue console shell window which will load the ISO as a virtual drive and allow it to find the drivers and diagnostic programs inside the ISO.

If you have a E2B HDD, you will need to convert the ISO to a FAT32 .imgPTN file (or if you boot it as .isoPE01, you could use the SHIFT+F10 key and run \_ISO\e2b\firadisk\LoadISONP.cmd from the E2B USB drive to load the ISO file as a virtual DVD to allow the diagnostic files to be seen).

The HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key software however, does not come as an ISO file.

Here is how to add it (or the Vision Diagnostics ISO) to E2B.

Add DLC Boot 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022 to E2B

'DLC Boot 2016 v3.2' .rar file (Build 160727) can be downloaded from the official dlcboot.com site.
As it contains copies of Windows and other licensed utilities, you should ensure you have the appropriate licences (or morals) before you use it however!

DLC2019 video with download links.

See end of page for DLCBoot 2022 .imgPTN instructions.

After unpacking the .rar file, you can run DLCBoot.exe from Windows as Administrator to either create a new bootable USB flash drive (use FAT32 for UEFI x64 booting) or a bootable ISO file or run any of the tools directly.

Run as Admin and click the CD icon to make an .ISO file

E2B v1.92k BETA now available (fixes problem when formatting as NTFS)

I had problems formatting a new USB drive using Make_E2B.exe today and discovered Windows 10 Creator is still causing RMPartUSB problems due to it recognising all partitions on a removable USB drive.

There is now a new version of RMPrepUSB and RMPartUSB (v2.1.739A) and the E2B download has also been updated. If you still get any problems making an NTFS E2B drive, please let me know!

• Google Drive download area
• OneDrive download area

Add ASCII art to E2B

If you have a text file which contains ASCII art, you can display it on the E2B boot screen by adding this line to your \_ISO\MyE2B.cfg file:

cat /%grub%/ASCII_E2B.txt && pause --wait=1 > nul

This will display the text file briefly as E2B boots...

The next version of E2B will contain the ASCII_E2B.txt file (but you have to add the line into your MyE2B.cfg file to see it).




If you are displaying lines longer than 79 characters, you will need to switch to 800x600 first to change from the initial boot screen resolution of 640x480 (80x30 characters).

graphicsmode -1 800 ;; cat /%grub%/ASCII_E2B.txt && pause --wait=1 > nul

Make your own ASCII art

Add netboot.xyz to E2B and PXE boot

If you want some of the payloads mentioned below (see list), but don't have room on your E2B drive for all of them and you can always boot on a system which has fast internet access, you can add the small kernel 339KB netboot.xyz.lkrn PXE boot file (or the iso) to your E2B drive and get all of them!

netboot.xyz.iso now also supports UEFI booting - see FAQ for full list.