Sunday 30 December 2012

Version 2.1.654 released as full version

The 'full release' version was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I have updated it with the latest version.
Changes can be read at http://www.rmprepusb.com/documents/release-2-0/version-history.
If you click on the Help (F1) button and click on the update box, the new version will be downloaded. You must then click on the downloaded file to install it manually.

Saturday 29 December 2012

Easy2Boot tutorial updated

I have included the AutoLinux code from Tutorial #96 into the Easy2Boot Tutorial #72.
I have also tested over 30 ISOs using the 'partnew' technique used in these tutorials and with 98% success; only the Trinity Rescue Disk ISO failed to work correctly.
Even DOS based ISOs just worked fine.
This allows you to just copy any ISO onto your Easy2Boot USB drive and try it. The menu is automatically made as the USB drive boots.

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Automatic grub4dos Linux ISO boot menu entry

Tutorial 96 shows how to add a grub4dos menu entry that will automatically create a new dynamically-created grub4dos menu in a ramdrive and list all your linux ISO files. You can then choose one of them and boot from it.

Thus means that you should be able to quickly try any linux ISO that you fancy without needing to make a special menu entry for each one. Just download the ISO file and copy it to the folder on your grub4dos bootable drive. Then boot from the drive and chose the Linux ISO menu entry - all the ISO files in a folder will be listed (as shown below) and you should be able to boot from any one of the ISOs.

Even a BackTrack 5 iso will just work!



Thursday 13 December 2012

Tails you win! A new method for booting linux from an ISO file!

I recently came across a post on reboot.pro by cdob on how to map an ISO file to a partition using grub4dos. This technique has the advantage that it should work for most linux ISOs, even the ones that don't support booting from an ISO file!
It also can get around the problem of booting a version of linux from an NTFS boot drive, even if that linux does not understand or support the NTFS filesystem.
This means that even if your USB grub4dos boot drive is formatted as NTFS, you can boot nearly any linux ISO from it!

Cool!

I tried this out using a Tails linux ISO file (which at the time I could not find a way to boot from an ISO file) and it worked a treat.

You can even boot from Ophcrack ISO file AND access the rainbow tables (no need to extract the rainbow tables onto the USB boot drive!).

If you have a linux ISO that you cannot get booting as an ISO file from a grub4dos boot pen/hdd, try this technique!

See http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/tails for details.

See also here for booting Tails 3.16 from a USB HDD.

Wednesday 5 December 2012

grub4dos and the blocklist command

It has always been there, but I have just found that the grub4dos blocklist command can be used to display the groups of contiguous sectors that make up a file. So you can use this command to check if an ISO file (for instance) is contiguous (and can therefore be directly mapped under grub4dos using map /xxx.iso (0xff)) or if it is not contiguous.
The file pe.bs is 512 bytes long and thus occupies one sector on the disk. The file knoppix511.iso however is split into two contiguous sector 'runs', one starting at block 24856 (1425152 sectors long) and the other at 1450616 (976 sectors long).
WinContig is included in RMPrepUSB and can be used to make all files on the drive contiguous if you run into this problem.

Monday 12 November 2012

Windows 7 To Go tutorial download updated

I was recently contacted by James Leyden who was running the Installer.cmd script on his Dell M15X Alienware laptop from 2008 to prepare a 1TB USB HDD drive.
The resulting USB drive would not boot:

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

 and indeed did not even have \bootmgr in the root of the drive. Upon investigation, we found that the bcdboot command was not working in the Installer.cmd script and further investigation revealed that James' Dell was in EFI mode (this was confirmed by running the command line utility testefi.exe).
The bcdboot command used in the script was modified to use the /f BIOS parameter but still the bcdboot command did not work. Finally, James downloaded the Windows 8 WAIK files and replaced the Win 7 WAIK version of BCDBOOT.EXE with the Win8 version. At last his Windows 7 To Go now boots!
I have now modified the NT6FastInstaller.zip download in tutorial #43 so that it uses the /f BIOS parameter and also now checks that both the bcdboot and bootsect commands actually complete successfully!
For your reference, the error that the Win7 version of bcdboot reports, if you attempt to use it to prepare a Win 7 USB drive on a system running 64-bit EFI Win 7, is:
BSFVC: Failed to create a new system store. Status = [c000003a]

See Tutorial 47 for the revised download files.

92 - BITS Intel BIOS Implementation Test Suite added

This is a BIOS test suite from Intel. It can be added as an ISO to a multiboot grub4dos USB drive and is useful to test BIOSes for compatibility. It is most useful for testing BIOSes on new or pre-production systems but can be use on any Intel CPU-based system.

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/92bits 

Sunday 4 November 2012

Boot Splash Screen

A user wanted to use the Clonezilla auto-restore tutorial, but did not want the user to see any menu text at all. They just wanted a splash screen and then a 10 seconds delay to allow them to hit F4 if they wanted a restore, otherwise they just wanted the system to boot to Windows as normal. This is similar to the way the Windows 7 F8 key works.
I found you could hide the menu completely and use hotkeys by adding two grubutils utilities, menusetting and hotkey - see here for more details.

Saturday 3 November 2012

Windows 8 install from ISO #43 updated

The technique in Tutorial 43 required the unattend.xml file to be pre-populated with the Windows 8 Product Key. This is OK for volume licence versions where the same key is used each time, however, for Retail versions, a different key is required each time for each different system. I have therefore added a user prompt to the grub4dos menu which asks the user for the Product Key before the installation begins.
Note that the set /p prompt string cannot be over 80 characters and should be less than 70 characters to avoid an error!

If you are prepared to make a small modification to the iso and edit the ei.cfg file in the \sources folder within the iso file, then you can avoid the need for the unattend.xml file needing to contain the product key.

Thursday 25 October 2012

New QEMU options added to RMPrepUSB

v2.1.651 now has two new options under the File menu tab.


Boot from ISO file using QEMU Emulator Ctrl+F11 - User can select an ISO file and optionally create a virtual hard disk and then boot QEMU from the ISO (for instance you can install XP to a virtual hard disk using this option)
Boot from Virtual HDD image using QEMU emulator Shift+F11 - Boot from a previously installed virtual hard disk image (for instance, you can install linux to a virtual hard disk using Ctrl+F11 and then boot to the hard disk at any time later using Shift+F11)

For instance, if you hit Ctrl+F11, you can select an XP install ISO, choose to create a new virtual hard disk image of any size and then choose how much memory to allocate to QEMU. The ISO will then boot and you can install Phase 1 (textmode) XP to the virtual hard disk. When the XP setup phase 1 reboots, it will reboot to the ISO file again but this time do NOT press a key to boot from the 'CD'. The QEMU BIOS will then boot from the hard disk and the ISO will be attached as the CD and the 2nd Phase (GUI Mode) of the XP install will continue to completion successfully. Note: Because QEMU is verrrry slow, this can take 4-6 hours!

You now have a virtual hard disk which is installed with XP. You can now run this at any time using Shift+F11. Again verrry slow to boot!

This allows you to quickly test boot an ISO to see what it looks like, without needing to set up QEMU Manager or use a different virtual machine.