How to add the UBCD4WIN ISO to E2B

The UBCD4WIN ISO is now quite old and development has been discontinued and the website is no longer available.

UBCD4WIN miniXP (BartPE) lacks drivers for modern systems and so is really only suitable for older systems and chipsets.

Offline Chocolatey for Win7 installs

I was asked yesterday (using online 'Chat') about using the E2B SDI_Choco offline feature to install Windows 7.

The problem here is that Chocolatey requires .Net 4 Framework and this is not included in Windows 7.

If you download the standalone install package for .Net 4 and try to install it, it requires a reboot before it will work. However, we cannot reboot during the Specialize pass or Windows Setup will complain about it when it reboots and will not proceed.

Equally, we cannot allow a reboot during MyStartup.cmd because this only runs once on first user login and so the code to install the offline choco apps will never run.

The solution was to install the .Net 4 package at the end of MySetupComplete.cmd when a reboot is imminent anyway.

I have added the necessary instructions to the Offline Choco page on the E2B website here under the Requirements heading.

If you have any questions, you can chat with me by clicking on the chat icon on the E2B website.

Click to chat

Old PC won't boot from E2B USB drive (flashing cursor)

To ensure that your E2B USB flash drive will boot from as many systems as possible, it should have the following characteristics:

1. Have the boot partition marked as Active (bootable)
2. Have grub4dos boot code in both the first sector (master boot record or MBR) and the first sector of the first partition (partition boot record or PBR)
3. Have two primary partitions in the MBR partition table
4. Have all boot files and E2B files within 137GB (128GiB) from the beginning of the drive

If you use the Make_E2B.exe GUI to make your E2B USB drive, then it will have these properties already.

It has been rumoured that some BIOSes will only boot from a USB FAT partition and not from an NTFS partition (although I have never seen this personally and I have never had any specific confirmation of this phenomenon!).

However, even if your drive is correctly made, some early PCs with USB 1.0 and early USB 2.0 ports may not boot to grub4dos\E2B.

E2B v1.93g available

Changes from 1.93f are:

• latest \grldr grub4dos version
• UUID and volume label of ISOs now displayed briefly in some cases
• NoSpeak.tag and NoBeep.tag files can be used with SDI_CHOCO to suppress talking and beeping

Now you can stop SDI_Choco speaking to you and also stop it beeping by adding two tag files to your configuration folder.

Please update your existing E2B drive(s) with 1.93g and let me have your feedback.

Note that in the final v1.93 version, I will delete the chocolatey.nupkg file from the \_ISO\WINDOWS\INSTALLS\INSTALLCHOCO folder and make the file available as a separate download. This will prevent a later E2B update from overwriting your chocolatey package and also reduce the size of the E2B download back to 17MB.

P.S. if you use ChocBox.cmd, there is a small bug. It says to use the command
choco install %appx% --source C:\DRIVERS\choco -y -r
but this should be
choco install %appx% --source C:\DRIVERS\chocbox -y -r

Change History

v1.93a - Addition of offline choco package support for SDI_CHOCO function (adds 6MB)
v1.93b - Improved \_ISO\docs\Chocbox\ChocBox.cmd for making offline choco packages.
v1.93c - GIFtoIMA script and improved ChocBox.cmd script
v1.93d - improved GIFtoIMA script to delete files > 0255.bmp and save as BMP or JPG, new grub4dos 0.4.6a
v1.93e - new Snappy Driver Installer Origin version, latest grub4dos 0.4.6a 2017-05-29, QRUN.g4b small change to .imgPTN so if second *. image file present it will get a partition type number of 7 if grub4dos does not give it one, improved ChocBox.cmd (now can get specific app version)
v1.93f - Switch_E2B.exe v1.0.16 hidden file fix, new Chocolatey version 0.10.6.1, openmandriva ISO sample mnu file
v1.93g - latest grub4dos, NoSpeak.tag and NoBeep.tag for SDI_CHOCO

What is the best way to speed up my notebook?

A friend recently asked me this question.

How to super-hide E2B files from Windows Explorer

A simple way to hide an ISO, .imgPTN or other payload files on an E2B drive is to simply set the Hidden attribute (right-click - Properties - tick Hidden - OK). But you knew that already right?...

But what if the user has 'Show hidden files' enabled in Explorer? He will still be able to see the files - so how can we prevent this?

Well, to make the file super-hidden (hidden+system), simply make sure the filename starts with a ~ symbol (as well as having the Hidden attribute set).

e.g. \_ISO\LINUX\~kali.iso

Explorer will not show the file, even if the user has 'Show hidden files' enabled (you may need to press F5 to refresh Explorer after you have changed the name, before it will disappear).

The user (and you) will still be able to see the file if  'Hide protected operating system files' is unticked however, but using ~ is easier than using the attrib +h +s command on the command line because you can add a ~ using Explorer.

WARNING: DO NOT USE SWITCH_E2B.exe on a ~xxx.imgPTN file - it will corrupt the drive! This bug is fixed in SWITCH_E2B v1.0.16.

Of course, this won't stop linux or the  dir /ah command from listing the files, but it is a simple tweak and will fool most Windows users.

Reference: Raymond Chen from here.

Adding OpenMandriva to E2B

The OpenMandriva ISO does not boot as a .ISO file when simply placed on an E2B drive.

Instead we need to make a .mnu file for it and specify the Volume Label of the ISO.

Here is an example menu:

E2B v1.93e available

Change History

v1.93a - Addition of offline choco package support for SDI_CHOCO function

v1.93b - Improved \_ISO\docs\Chocbox\ChocBox.cmd for making offline choco packages.

v1.93c - GIFtoIMA script and improved ChocBox.cmd script
v1.93d - improved GIFtoIMA script to delete files > 0255.bmp and save as BMP or JPG, new grub4dos 0.4.6a
v1.93e - new Snappy Driver Installer Origin version, latest grub4dos 0.4.6a 2017-05-29, QRUN.g4b small change to .imgPTN so if second *. image file present it will get a partition type number of 7 if grub4dos does not give it one, improved ChocBox.cmd (now can get specific app version)

Snappy Driver Installer is dead-ish - long live Origin!

It seems that that old Snappy Driver Installer has forked to a new 'Origin' version (SDIO).
'The old sdi-tool.org project  is no longer in the hands of the original developers, is no longer open source and is not safe to use.'

This is rather confusing because the old site clearly says it is free and open source, but apparently does contain adware now...

For the new Origin version is here but cannot simply replace the old version because the executables have different names (AUTO.cmd requires changes).

E2B v1.93e will include the new forked version but if you want the sdi-tool.org version, then remove all the SDIO files from the SNAPPY folder (except for the AUTO.cmd file) and replace them with the download from sdi-tool.org.

The new version of AUTO.cmd will call the SDIO version by default, but if the SDI executable is present, it will use that instead (if you have replaced SDIO with SDI from the sdi-tool site).

Do you have a StarTech S2510BU3ISO Virtual DVD emulator enclosure?

A few months ago I contacted StarTech support about the bug in their S2510BU3ISO product.
Many users on Amazon and elsewhere have reported difficulties with the product.
You can read my review in a previous blog post here.

If you freshly format the drive and then add a single ISO file to the \_ISO1 folder, then it should work correctly.

But, I gave them a simple Windows cmd test script (StarTechFormatTest.cmd in Easy2Boot Alternate Download Areas - Other Files) which will format the hard disk in the USB enclosure and then copy 1GB files to it. You just need to download the debian-live-8.1.0-amd64-mate-desktop.iso file from t'internet and rename it to 1GB.ISO first. You will need a 60GB+ disk fitted (SSD recommended for speed).