Saturday 18 June 2016

All in One System Rescue ISO (Paul Vreeland)

Paul Vreeland has made available his 682MB Rescue ISO for all to use.

The LiveCD part is based on Ubuntu 64-bit and so is not suitable for 32-bit systems. It contains a few useful utilities (all legal to use by businesses), but the most useful part appears to be the Windows utilities that are within the ISO.

You can use the ISO directly in E2B (e.g. name it .iso64 so you don't try to use it on 32-bit systems), or make a .imgPTN64 file from it with the MPI ToolKit for 64-bit MBR and UEFI-booting.
The most useful part comes if you can mount the ISO in Windows (or switch to an .imgPTN image containing the ISO contents) and then you can run AiO-SRT.exe to start the GUI. This means you will often need to download and install the utilities onto the same Windows system that you are trying to fix.

     The AIO System Rescue utility changes the Windows Desktop background and runs a GUI.

See here for a list of utilities. An internet connection seems required for many of the utilities. Some apps require .Net to be downloaded and installed. Many of the buttons just lead to a website where you need to download and install the application onto the system (if it is not too infected!).

He has plans for a Lite version with 100% scripted automated task too (and hopefully a 32-bit LiveCD version?).

P.S. Use the torrent link for a download if possible and don't forget to donate to his site!

Happy Birthday to E2B!

According to the E2B Version History page here, after many Beta versions, E2B v1.00 was finally released to the world on 2013-06-18, so that means that E2B is 3 today - so Happy Birthday E2B!

Yes, believe it or not, the idea for developing Easy2Boot first started on the reboot.pro forum over three years ago! If you are really interested (or suffer from insomnia or are just plain nosey), you can study the progress of the various E2B Betas and how Sambul61, cdob, Scooby, Wonko the Sane, Rootman, DanialCollinet, halikus, libranco, h3xl3y and many others, contributed to it's development here.



Warning: Old joke alert!


A small boy was walking with his parents in London, just as an old man was being released through the main prison gates of Wormwood Scrubs, having just finished an 18 year(!) sentence. The old 'lag' was naturally exuberant and he ran up to the family shouting 'HURRAY, HURRAY, I'M FREE, I'M FREE', to which the small boy replied 'So what mister, I'm four!'.






Family story #1 (true story)!
Many years ago in the early 60's, when they were a young married couple with two small boys, my parents ran two supermarkets, two post-offices, two off-licences, a taxi service and a grocery delivery service. They worked really hard, 18 hours a day, every day. Every day that is, except for Sundays, when they had a well-deserved 'lie-in' in the morning. 

So my younger brother and I knew that hung on my parent's firmly-shut bedroom door every Sunday morning, was a large but invisible sign that said 'Do not disturb - on pain of death!'.

My brother and I generally got on quite well with each other, but early this one particular Sunday morning when our parents were 'resting', we got into an argument in our bedroom, which led to a loud shouting match, and then soon afterwards, to actual fisticuffs!

On hearing this unholy racket, my father was forced to leave my mother in their matrimonial bed and attend to the matter. He stormed into our bedroom and grabbed us both, gripping the back of our small necks tightly in each of his huge hands. My brother and I could tell from his expression that he was not at all pleased at being 'disturbed' and that we were probably going to get a good walloping, very soon!
My father turned to me and asked me angrily 'What do you think you're doing?', and I replied...'fighting'.

He then turned to my younger brother and said to him even more angrily, 'and what do you think you are doing?'
My brother looked up at my father and replied tentatively, 'Helping him?'.

There was a pause... I could hear my mother giggling from their bedroom across the landing. My father's mouth almost broke into a smile and we escaped a spanking that morning - thanks to my little brother!


Family story #2 (true story)!
Our family house has an all-glass and PVC steel conservatory (i.e. no brick walls) and we had just adopted a lovely little black kitten named Jemima, which was currently using a litter tray in the corner of the conservatory to perform her somewhat smelly ablutions.
I turned to my father and said 'Hey Dad, how can we make a cat flap in a glass conservatory?'
He looked up at me, and with a twinkle in his eye replied, 'Easy son, just kick it up the ass!'.

Well, it was funny at the time...

Friday 17 June 2016

Cracking BIOS passwords (Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Compaq, Insyde, Phoenix, Sony, Samsung)

Many old BIOSes have a preset but secret backdoor password.

But I happened to stumble across this page today.

It describes how to crack the BIOS password on those systems which print a code if you enter the wrong password too many times. It also offers a range of Windows executables (.exe files) for each model which can translate that code into the original BIOS password!

Fujitsu-Siemens BIOS pwd cracker

From the user comments, it appears to work for many systems (I have not tried it 'for real' myself).

This seems like a useful addition to a Techies toolkit (the exe files need .NET and a Windows OS), especially if the customer has forgotten their BIOS password and you need to change the settings.

There is also a simple 'unlocker' web page here which contains the same code but for all types of system (obviously needs internet access and a browser).

Another useful web page (with unlocker script which doesn't seem to work for me?) is here.

Wednesday 15 June 2016

Install OpenBSD from Easy2Boot

You can download and install OpenBSD by adding the cd59.iso network install ISO to E2B.

OpenBSD 59 Desktop

However, if you want to use the non-network installer, install59.iso, you will find that OpenBSD installer script/wizard will not be able to find the installation files (which are, of course, hidden inside the ISO).

Tuesday 14 June 2016

Add Mepis antiX MX-15 with persistence to E2B

MX-15 ISOs can be booted straight from E2B - just copy the ISOs to the E2B drive (e.g. \_ISO\LINUX folder), make them contiguous (run \MAKE_THIS_DRIVE_CONTIGUOUS.cmd) and boot.


Monday 13 June 2016

More Frettt's Themes for E2B (en & de)

It seems to be a 'Themes' week!

Frettt has sent me his latest English and German E2B themes which I have uploaded to the Alternate Downloads sites (Themes folder) as a .zip file.

You can view all 16 (8 English + 8 German) on the Gallery page on his site. Here is one of them (German version)...



Sunday 12 June 2016

Add TechUSB and tuxpe to E2B

TechUSB

This Knoppix-based product is sold by RepairTech. It is part of their TechSuite. YouTube video here (TechUSB starts here).

FYI - I have no connection or affiliation with them.

Their TechUSB_Creator.exe utility creates a bootable USB flash drive.

To add this to E2B, simply drag-and-drop the drive letter icon of the TechUSB flash drive onto the MPI_FAT32 desktop shortcut (after installing the MPI Tool Kit) - then make a TechUSB.imgPTN file.

Note: If you want to add personal storage, then increase the default size of the .imgPTN file by at least 200MB.


Laura's E2B themes

If you haven't visited Laura's site for a while (like me!), you will be pleasantly surprised to see she has added even more lovely E2B menu examples.




She has used both grub4dos and GFXBoot Menu themes for both her E2B menus and for the CSM menus inside .imgPTN files. No doubt they took quite a bit of work!

To cycle through the different menu screenshots, just click on one of the screenshots on her site and use the arrow markers.

You can download some of her themes here.

I have also slightly tweaked the T2-MAINMENU theme (the one which does not use GFXBoot) and uploaded it to the 'Themes' folder in the Alternate Download Area.

Laura's T2 MainMenu Theme (slightly-modified)

Note: Some of Laura's GFXBoot menus seem to overflow if you have too many menu items...

Laura has a 'Contact Me' form if you need (free) help and advice on making your own E2B themes, and she can speak English, Spanish and German.

P.S. Laura is working on a PDF which contains the easy2boot.com site information but written in German.

Saturday 11 June 2016

E2B v1.81a Beta available

I have uploaded E2B 1.81a. The changes are fairly minor:
  • Alternate Power off sample .mnu file added for systems where F10 does not turn off the system.
  • Change Admin detection test in MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE script so does not rely on a Windows exe file. 
  • Improve MOVE_IMGPTN script.
  • Improve windows install from ISO for XML path specification and check /autounattend.xml is not empty. Either full path or just the filename can be used to specify the XML file. Now updates Helper Flash drive (if present) with XML file contents.
The file is available in the Alternate Download Areas as usual.

Note: v1.81b has an extra bugfix in QRUN.ISO for .isoPE and .ISOPE01 file extension causing the LOADISOPE.cmd file to error.

Thursday 9 June 2016

www.easy2boot.com and the new Ezoic page layout

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the www.easy2boot.com domain is now routed through Ezoic.

These guys reformat the original site layout for me (for free) and add more AdSense and other adverts which increases the ad revenue that the site earns and this helps towards the site costs (due to the large bandwidth load, the E2B site costs me £200 a year and many people use AdBlock to block the adverts on the site).

Ezoic experiment with different site layouts to find the 'optimal' layout. So one person may see a different site layout from another person (try Chrome 'Incognito' and you will get a different layout!). The first time you load an easy2boot.com page from Ezoic, it stores a cookie in your computer's browser cookie folder so that you will always get the same format each time you visit the site.

10% of new users will receive the original site layout. This is so that Ezoic can compare the original site performance with the new layouts.

A few users (who don't use AdBlock - thanks!) have complained about the misleading ads (e.g. 'Download Now' buttons).

You can use AdBlock to stop the ads, but you will still get the same 'Ezoic' layout and you will not see the original page layout.

A few people have been generous by donating and I am very grateful to them. If the new site layout annoys you and if you have donated £5 or more (or have contributed in other ways), please contact me for instructions on how to view the original site pages which have less ads and the original page layout. 

Tuesday 7 June 2016

Adding Lenovo Maintenance Utilities (IBM DOS-based) to E2B

Some Lenovo (ex-IBM) maintenance utilities make an IBM-DOS bootable USB flash drive.

These USB flash drives are formatted with a FAT12 volume which boots to IBM DR-DOS via IBMBIO.com. Typically, they are in floppy diskette format (i.e. no partition table).

Under grub4dos, it is possible to boot from a FAT12 drive using:
chainloader --pcdos /ibmbio.com
However, if you convert the Lenovo USB flash drive to a FAT32 .imgPTN file and try to boot from it using E2B, you will find that it does not boot. The reason for this is that, unfortunately, IBM DR-DOS does not seem to boot from a FAT32 volume.

The IBM DOS boot chain is:

IBMBIO.COM -> IBMDOS.COM -> COMMAND.COM

We can fix this by using FreeDOS boot files in the .imgPTN partition image or by making an image .IMA file...

Saturday 4 June 2016

SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 64GB for just £17 (UK)

If you are fed up waiting for your E2B USB stick to boot or for your large .ISO, .imgPTN or .VHD files to be copied across, why not treat yourself to one of these?

SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 - up to 245MB/s read speed and up to 190MB/s write speed. I have recommended these drives for about 2 years now and they routinely come out top in most USB Flash drive reviews for speed+value.

The cheapest I have found is from Tesco Direct here for £17 (+£3 P&P). Note: Looks like the price has now gone up to £22!!!

Note that very old versions of this drive were of the 'Fixed Disk' type, but all versions for the last year or so should be of the 'Removable' type.

Download official Microsoft Windows ISOs

I just saw an article on Dave's Computer Tips about a utility that will download official MS Windows Install ISOs + Office. Looks very handy! Why not subscribe too whilst you are there...


Note: 'English'  = American (USA)
          'English International' = English (UK)   !!!


Friday 3 June 2016

Add Anvi Rescue Disk, Sophos Bootable AV, Trend Micro AV and Panda AV to your E2B drive

Note: None of the AV utilities below contain EFI boot files.

Anvi Rescue Disk 11

This is a free 100MB download from AnviSoft here. It supports several languages (see screenshot below).



Tuesday 31 May 2016

E2B $$AddWin2Main.mnu bugfix!

If you want to directly run a Windows 8 or 10 Install ISO from the Main Menu and specify an XML file, you may find that it does not work!

Nikki reported that when using the $$AddWin2Main.mnu with a Win10 ISO and when setting the XML variable, a "Windows could not parse or process unattend answer file [D:\autonattend.xml]. The answer file is invalid" error was produced.

It turns out that the $$AddWin2Main.mnu file example was incorrect!

For Vista\Win7, you need to specify the XML variable with the full path of the XML file, but for Win8\10, you should only specify the XML filename (not the full path)!

The new $$AddWin2Main.mnu file is here.

I am very sorry if anyone has been tearing their hair out trying to get this to work for Win8/10!

I have also updated the web page documentation here and E2B v1.81 will work with the XML variable containing either a full path or just the XML file name for both Win7 and Win8/10 and also will now work if using a USB Helper Flash drive + E2B HDD USB drive too.

Thursday 19 May 2016

Two new E2B themes from Frettt (English and German)

I have uploaded two new themes provided by Frettt (thanks!) to the Alternate Download Areas - Themes folder and also added some screenshots to the Gallery page of E2B. There is a German and English MyE2B.cfg file for each wallpaper.


Wednesday 18 May 2016

UEFI Grub2 PTN2 menu system - Beta 3 now available (Release Candidate?)

Beta 3 is now in the 'Other Files' folder in the 'Alternate Downloads' areas.
Full documentation is here.
Just in case you are new to this grub2 menu system, it's main purpose is that it allows you to boot some ISOs via UEFI that will not-UEFI boot using .imgPTN files because those ISOs do not contain EFI boot files (grub2 gets around this).
  • Over 60 ISOs supported
  • fix AVG booting in MBR mode
  • systemrescuecd can now UEFI-boot (but startx may not work in EFI64)
  • archassault menu bugfix - now works on NTFS 64-bit, but not on FAT32 for some reason!
  • blackarchlinux x64 now works on NTFS (ISO too big for FAT32)
  • opensuse (4.5GB) works on NTFS
  • Excel spreadsheet updated
  • All xxx_extracted.grub2 menu files have been removed from the menu folders and placed in the \_ISO\docs\Sample mnu Files folder on partition 2. This speeds up the grub2 Main menu loading. Anyone who wants these 'extracted' menus will need to copy the correct .grub2 file to the correct menu folder.
  • Some menu bugfixes
  • Some .cmd scripts improved/updated

Tuesday 17 May 2016

Fedora + persistence using grub2

In Tutorial #67 on the RMPrepUSB.com website, I describe how to get Fedora booting as a flat-file configuration with persistence.

I decided to try this using the new grub2 menu system, and here is the final menu:

Sunday 15 May 2016

New grub2 menu system, UEFI_GRUB2_PTN2 Beta2 Tool Kit now available

This Beta 2 toolkit allows you to UEFI-boot and then directly boot from a range of ISO files (and some .img and EFI files) by selecting any of the payloads from a grub2 menu system. The files do not need to be contiguous and you can add your own grub2 menus and files too.

The .xls spreadsheet showing all the payloads that have currently been tested is here (also in download).
[Edit] Forgot to include Kaspersky in the spreadsheet, You can EFI and MBR boot using the extracted files (see readme.txt in \rescue folder). You can also have persistent updates if you re-make the .imgPTNLBAa23 file as a 400MB file.

Note: It is possible, using this system, to UEFI-boot from many linux ISOs, even if they do not contain any UEFI boot files (e.g. UEFI-boot to Zorin, Kaspersky, etc.)!

In Beta2, 95%+ listed payloads have been tested on FAT32 and are working.

Instructions

Follow the instructions on the E2B page here (full details are also on this page). Screenshots, etc. are in my previous blog post here.

Basically,
1. Download the .7z file here and extract it to an empty folder on your Windows system
2. Create a 2nd Primary FAT32 partition on your E2B USB HDD
3. Copy the xxxx.imgPTNLBAa23 file to your E2B drive's first partition at \_ISO\MAINMENU
4. Copy the contents of the PTN2 folder to the root of the second partition (you should see a \_ISO folder at the root of the second partition)
5. Add your ISOs, etc. to the second partition (see .XLS spreadsheet for details of what name you need to use for each file)
6. If you want to be able to run the same ISOs from the E2B menu, copy the five .mnu files provided to the \_ISO\MAINMENU folder on the first partition of your E2B drive.
7. Now boot to E2B and select the new .imgPTNLBAa23 Beta 2 file and have fun!

If you already have Beta 1, I suggest you delete all *.grub2 files from the second partition, and then run the .\PTN2\COPY_ALL_GRUB2_FILES_TO_USB_DRIVE.cmd script which will copy all the .grub2 files over. If you have purposefully deleted any of the .grub2 files on the second partition (for faster booting), then use the UPDATE_GRUB2_FILES_ON_USB_DRIVE.cmd script.

Most of the payloads should work with a NTFS partition on partition 2 but I have not tested many of them on NTFS yet. FAT32 is more compatible, but you cannot boot from ISOs that are over 4GB.

The grub2 menu system does not need the ISOs to be contiguous, but the E2B grub4dos menu system does.

There are probably at least two more Betas to release before I can think about a full release yet, but it is getting there. if you see any ISOs missing from the spreadsheet that you need, please let me know.

Please feedback any comments, suggestions or problems!


Saturday 14 May 2016

A lesson for us all - why bigger is not always better (or diagnosing a 'non-booting' system)!

If you read my blog regularly, you will know that 2 years ago I built my own system. That previous blog post described how I went about it.

Now over the last few months, I have noticed that this Z87 PC did not always boot when I switched it on. In fact, although the fans whirred a bit, I did not get the familiar 'beep' from the mainboard on these occasions. When this happened, I would just turn it off at the PSU mains rocker switch, wait a minute or so and then turn it on again and it would usually work. That is, until this afternoon,,,

This afternoon, I shut down the PC in order to do a clean boot from a USB HDD (as I have done literally hundreds of times before) and I got the 'no display, no beep' symptom yet again. But this time there was no persuading my Haswell Z87 PC to boot!

Diagnosing a 'dead' system

Now the Asus Z87 mainboard is fitted with a number of diagnostic LEDs soldered to the PCB. These include:

New Gandalf WinPE x64 Win10 TH2 with SysWow

Friday 13 May 2016

How To's and Gotchas in grub2 menus

These are my notes below, which may be of interest to those of you writing grub2 (or even grub4dos) menus.

Most of these are concerned with directly booting from a linux ISO file using 'cheat codes'.

If that does not interest you, then don't read any more.

Note: I have been learning and experimenting with grub2 for a week now, so I am by no means an expert!

Thursday 12 May 2016

Easy2Boot website now routed via ezoic

I have now signed up with ezoic.com who will re-format the easy2boot.com pages and place ads on the pages for me automatically.

You may experience some very weird page layouts on the E2B site in the next few weeks! Ezoic will trial lots of different formats until it finds the 'best' ones - this may take several months!

Note that a cookie is saved on your first visit which determines what layout you see after that. If you delete the site cookie, you may (randomly) get a different layout on refresh (Ctrl+F5).

Ezoic is also used on the www.rmprepusb.com website. I am hoping it doesn't screw-up the easy2boot site as much as it does the rmprepusb site!

E2B v1.80 available

I have released E2B v1.80j as the release version 1.80 today.

Links on the website will still point to 1.79 for  a few days, but 1.80 is available on the Alternate Download sites (Google Drive and OneDrive).

grub2 menu system testing continues (pre-Beta2)!

I have been testing, reviewing and fixing a lot of menus in the grub2 menu system.

Here is a spreadsheet of the testing so far.

x = does not work
(blank) = not yet tested

click to enlarge
Beta2 should be coming in a day or so...

As you can see, every payload needs to be tested on 4 different VMs and on two types of partitions (NTFS and FAT32)!

Booting Dr.Web LiveDisk ISO with persistence from grub2


A DrWeb_Persistent.imgPTN23 file can be found here. It was made as follows:
1. Make a 800MB FAT32 partition on a USB drive
2. Download and run the DrWeb USB creator utility drweb-livedisk-900-usb.exe
3. Run it to extract the files to the USB drive
4. Boot the USB drive on a real system - this prepares it
5. Refresh the updates - reboot and check updates are persistent
6. Drag-and-drop the USB drive letter onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop icon to make a .imgPTN23 file (syslinux 603, auto-convert). I modified the \syslinux\txt.cfg and the \boot\grub\grub.cfg files to add nomodeset vga=ask ignore_uuid. 
Note: Updates are not persistent even on their own flash drive!  So it obviously has a bug!

Booting from ISO

The Dr.Web ISO boots fine in MBR mode from E2B and can be booted from the ISO with persistence by adding a .mnu file.

However, during testing of the new GRUB2 menu system for E2B, I tried the Dr.Web LiveDisk ISO (drweb-livedisk-900-cd.iso - free), but it did not boot using the grub2 menu that I 'borrowed' from the 'Multiboot USB Flash drive' project here (I got a 'squashfs not found' type error).

After many attempts to get it booting from an ISO using the cheat code 'iso-scan/filename=', I finally looked at the 'casper' linux shell script file located inside the initrd file in the scripts folder (using 7Zip), and found this code...

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Grub2 menu system for E2B - early Beta available

The first Beta (Beta1  v0.01) is available for testing!

Please contact me if you want a copy to test. You will need a E2B USB HDD with a second partition.

It is possible to use this system on a Removable flash drive (but it is complicated because Windows cannot access the 2nd partition!).

Details are now published (in an early form) on the easy2boot website at http://www.easy2boot.com/uefi-grub2-ptn2/

Note that most of the linux menu items have been tested, but many of the other menus have not been tested with any payload at all yet.

MBR Main Menu

Sunday 8 May 2016

Grub2 support in E2B - progress report...

I have been spending quite a while thinking about the grub2 menu structure and it seems some people put E2B on the 2nd partition of their USB drive instead of the first partition. I don't advise this because of the 137GB BIOS bug, but as long as the 2nd partition ends before 137GB, it should work OK.

For payload files to be detected by the grub2 menu system, they must have specific lower-case names (e.g. avg.iso, konbootx64.efi). Files with names such as avg_arl_cdi_all_120_150814a10442.iso or "AVG AntiVirus.iso" will NOT be detected by the default grub2 menu system.

So there will be a large list of specific payload file names which I will document at a later date. As a consequence, you can only have one version of any ISO (though you can add your own uniquely-named payloadfiles and add your own grub2 menu for it).

Friday 6 May 2016

Coming soon! grub2 UEFI-booting from linux ISO files using E2B

Currently you cannot directly boot from an ISO file via UEFI using Easy2Boot - you have to convert the ISO to a .imgPTN file first.

However, grub2 can UEFI-boot and can run linux ISOs (some of which will run even if the ISOs do not support UEFI-booting and do not contain an \EFI folder!).

The reason E2B does not use this mechanism is that some UEFI systems will only UEFI-boot from a USB disk containing both MBR and UEFI boot files - even if the system is set to boot from Legacy/BIOS devices.

This means that if you had grub2 UEFI boot files on your FAT32 E2B drive, then you can never boot to the E2B menu on these systems!


Monday 2 May 2016

E2B not booting on GA-73PVM-S2H PC

Samir contacted me about a problem he had with his GA-73PVM-S2H PC.

He could boot from this PC to a USB drive prepared using Rufus (to Elemetary OS, for example), but not if it contained E2B.

The symptom was that the PC would just hang with no keyboard response or boot messages of any kind, as soon as he tried to boot from the E2B USB drive...