Monday 19 February 2018

Add AROS AspireOS Titan to E2B

The AspireOS ISO seems to have a problem booting if we just try to add the ISO to E2B.

Here is how to add it to E2B as a .imgPTN file for MBR and UEFI-32-bit booting.

References

Amiga Board forum

Instructions

Thursday 15 February 2018

Boot from an E2B USB drive using VMWare

You can test install Windows (7/8/10 etc.) from an E2B drive to a virtual hard disk using VMWare.
The advantage of this process is that a Removable-type USB flash drive will appear in the VM as a Removable drive and thus will load the 'LOADISO.cmd' file in the same way as it runs on a real system. This means you can test E2B with Windows ISOs+Unattend XML files without using a real system.

There is also new page on the E2B site here which describes the process.

This process works using VMWare Player (free) or VMWare WorkStation...

Tuesday 13 February 2018

E2B v1.98f/g BETA

E2B v1.98f BETA (in Alternate Download Area) now has a revised version of the FreeDOS boot image.

The disk image (\_ISO\DOS\MNU\ FreeDos288.ima.gz) is now actually a 7.6MB FAT32 disk image containing FreeDOS.FreeDOS now loads an NTFS driver, EMM386 and a DOS mouse driver. It also contains a selection of FreeDOS utilities.

This means you can just copy a mouse-enabled DOS utility, such as the DOS version of Ghost.exe to your E2B drive, boot to E2B, and then boot to the FreeDOS floppy image from the DOS menu and directly run C:\Ghost.exe directly from your NTFS or FAT32 E2B drive.

Because the FreeDOS image is over 7MB in size and has 5MB of free space available, you can also extract the .ima file and then add your own DOS utilities into the image. See the E2B DOS page for more details.

Wednesday 7 February 2018

Adding Dos programs and utilities to E2B

If you have a DOS (FreeDOS or MS-DOS, etc.) floppy disk image (.ima or .img), you can just directly add it to the E2B drive and it should boot correctly.

If you want to be able to modify the contents, you can use a program like WinImage, or you could convert the image to a FAT32 .imgPTN file.

Using the E2B FreeDos image

E2B includes a FreeDOS disk image as \_ISO\DOS\MNU\Freedos288.IMA.gz.

If you boot to this, you can access and run small DOS programs directly from the E2B drive because the FreeDOS image also loads an NTFS driver and support (sort of!) for long-filename for FAT32.

Sunday 4 February 2018

My YouTube channel has just reached new dizzy heights!


Wow! It seems I am well on the way to making my first $million (not!).
Strange, as it says I have 2500 subscribers on the videos???

Please feel free to subscribe (before it goes back below 1000 again!).

Sunday 28 January 2018

E2B v1.98b/c BETA available

v1.98b BETA is available
v1.98c BETA (small change to QRUN to add NCQ tip message)
v1.98d BETA (small change to QRUN for .isopersist tip messages)
v1.98e BETA FreeDOS floppy image now has increased conventional memory (was 300K, now 530K) so can run larger programs

Download here - if you have problems with Windows Defender, download the .zip version or E2B instead - extract the files and run Make_E2B.exe.

Changes from v1.98a BETA
  • Support for .iso filenames ending in new NCQ suffix (e.g. WinPEx64_ncq.iso)
  • Other v. small changes

About the *NCQ filename suffix

Friday 26 January 2018

Bob Omb's WinPE v1.5 (2018-01-14)

Bob Omb's latest release is v1.5. You can just add the .iso file to E2B as it is a WinBulder-based ISO.

Once at the Desktop, you can use CTRL+TAB to change languages. For a UK keyboard, pick the American flag which is shown immediately after the French flag (there is no UK flag available!). The second American flag shown is for USA (default).

Bob Omb's default desktop

It also works with PEStartup, so you can easily modify the default wallpaper, add your own desktop shortcuts to your own portable apps, drivers and auto-start any applications - see here for more details about PEStartup and how to add it to any WinPE. Note that it may take about a minute or two before PEStartup auto-runs, so be patient.

Sunday 21 January 2018

E2B v1.98a BETA available (with new .isopersist file extension for ubuntu-based ISOs)

v1.98a Beta changes are:
  • patchme script now removes the grub4dos startup message 'If hangup, use 'geometry --lba1sector (128)'
  • Variables SIZE_E2B and SIZE_HD1 can now be used in MyE2B.cfg files in HEADING and FOOTER (size of drive in GB)
  • 'GodMode' folder added to \_ISO\docs\Download URLs for easy access to Windows GodMode list
  • DrWeb900_Persistent.mnu added
  • .isopersist ubuntu file extension supported (no .mnu file required for persistence)

.isopersist file exension details

Thursday 18 January 2018

Tuesday 16 January 2018

Set up a different E2B wallpaper for each menu

It is possible to configure E2B so that each menu loads a different background wallpaper.

For the AUTO and WINDOWS menus, we just need to add these 800x600 files:
  • \_ISO\AUTO.bmp
  • \_ISO\SVR2K8R2.bmp
  • \_ISO\SVR2012.bmp
  • \_ISO\VISTA.bmp
  • \_ISO\WIN7.bmp
  • \_ISO\WIN8.bmp
  • \_ISO\WIN10.bmp
  • \_ISO\SVR2016.bmp
  • \_ISO\WINMENU.bmp (background for the Windows Install Menu - if any of the other Windows .bmp are used, this should also exist)
Note that the file extension should be .bmp, even if the actual contents are .jpg files or .gz or LZMA compressed .bmp files. For instance, you can just rename VISTA.jpg to VISTA.bmp, etc.


For the other 9 menu folders (MAINMENU, DOS, ANTIVIRUS, etc.), we can add a .mnu file to each of the menu folders as described at http://www.easy2boot.com/configuring-e2b/multiple-backgrounds/

However, I have added an alternative method now which may be easier for you to change and update...

Saturday 13 January 2018

RMPrepUSB v2.1.740 released

v2.1.740 has better support for grub4dos when installing to an exFAT drive and also has the most recent version of WinContig.

Sunday 7 January 2018

MPI Tool Pack v0.079/0.080 released

Just a few small bugs and tidy-ups.

MPI Tool Pack v0.079
  1. Fix CreateDesktopShortcuts.cmd so it now works with Windows systems with a non-standard Desktop path.
  2. Small change to menu.lst for clover boot patch (should have no discernible affect).
  3. Fix menu.lst for detection of 3rd ptn for FreeBSD images when Switch_E2B.exe is used.
Update by downloading and unpacking to your Desktop and then running CreateDesktopShortcuts.cmd again.

MPI Tool Pack v0.080

  1. Update with latest SWITCH_E2B.exe version
  2. Bugfix for when syslinux\isolinux is in root of drive

Thursday 4 January 2018

How to add an animated GIF to your E2B menu

Here is an example of how to add the 'TeaTime' optical illusion animated GIF to E2B.

It takes about 2 minutes!


Adding animation is really quite easy now...

Saturday 23 December 2017

Add jokes to your E2B menu for Xmas

One way to add jokes to your E2B menu would be to convert a series of PowerPoint slides into an animated GIF and display it on the E2B Menu, however, this would always show the jokes in the same order each time you booted to E2B.

Here is a small grub4dos script that allows you to display one of 36 randomly-chosen jokes on your E2B menus.

You must update to E2B v1.97A or later for this to work properly due to some bugs in older versions of grub4dos.


Instructions...

E2B v1.97A released

The bugs in grub4dos have been fixed by the developer now and v1.97A is now released.

Please update your E2B drives.

Changes from v1.97 to v1.97A:
  • bugfix in grub4dos \grldr for helptext colour and --string= issues.
  • E2B_Editor.exe - small bugfix for colours 6, 7 and 8 not quite correct shade.
  • WinLite10 XML sample files updated to add amd64 section.

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Design a Decomputo-like theme for E2B

A few people have asked about the theme used by Decomputo in their E2B YouTube video:




An example of the Decomputo menu is shown below:


I do not know the exact details of how this was configured, however I can give you a few hints on how to add a similar menu system...

Small bug in E2B v.1.97

I have just noticed a bug in E2B v1.97.

The issue is that the helptext just under the menu does not appear in the correct colour.

This is due to a bug in the new grub4dos version 2017-12-05 which I hope will be fixed soon.

The issue can be fixed by changing your MyE2B.cfg file so that the helptext color command follows the normal colour command, e.g.

#this does not change the helptext colour!
color helptext=0x0001FF
color normal=0x808040

#this does change the helptext colour correctly.
color normal=0x808040
color helptext=0x0001FF

It seems the color normal command also changes the helptext colour.
If you wish, you can use a previous version of \grldr instead.

I have reported the bug here and will re-release v1.97 as v1.97A when it is fixed.

Sunday 17 December 2017

New 'Display colours' .mnu file included in E2B v1.97

I have added a sample .mnu file, \_ISO\docs\Sample mnu Files\E2B Menus\Display_RGB_Colours.mnu, to E2B v1.97.

You can copy the Display_RGB_Colours.mnu file to a menu folder (e.g. \_ISO\UTILITIES) and use it to help you choose a grub4dos 4-bit or 24-bit RGB colour values...

Saturday 16 December 2017

Easy2Boot v1.97 Full Release is now available

The latest E2B v1.97 full release is now available from the Alternate Download Areas.

Changes from v1.96 are:
  • Download is now in self-extracting .exe RAR4 format instead of .zip format (less false-positive virus alerts!).
  • Small change of all E2B menus and language files - menu help text now does not have leading space at start of each help line.
  • New grub4dos 2017-12-05
  • New hstart and hwidth parameters can be set in MyE2B.cfg to set the menu help text x start offset and the line width. You can now position the menu help text anywhere on the display.
  • Make_E2B_USB_Drive.cmd now prompts user to delete or change the size of the 500MB CONTIG.ISO file.
  • New Make_E2B.exe - the extract button now works even if no USB drive is detected and it was not run as admin. Also, it now warns that user will require WinHelper USB Flash drive for Windows Install ISOs if Fixed Disk type of USB drive is detected.
  • Fix $Default E2B Menu.cfg by adding !BAT to prevent initial error message after using PimpMydrive.cmd (bugfix).
  • 'No !BAT string in MyE2B.cfg' error message suppressed if no MyE2B.cfg file exists (bugfix).
  • Snappy SDIO .cfg file changed to suppress GNU licence EULA on first run + updated version
  • CENTREHD code revised for better centering of menu headings.
  • Small bugfix to E2B_Editor.exe + it now lists both .bmp and .jpg files in open file dialog by default.
  • New setmenu draw-box command added (see here).
  • String command bugfix and documented on E2B site.
  • New BoxDemo sample theme added to demonstrate new hstart, hwidth, drawbox, line and string features.
  • Small \_ISO\Sample_MyBackground.jpg file added for use with E2B_Editor.
  • Small changes to some .cfg sample themes.
  • Desinfect 2017 sample .mnu file added.
Please report any issues ASAP! If you have used Pimp_My_Drive.cmd to add extra mnu items, please re-run Pimp_My_Drive.cmd again after you have updated to the new version.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Easy2Boot v1.97f available (Release Candidate - please try it!)

E2B v1.97f BETA is now available from the Alternate Download Areas.

I will release this as v1.97 Full Release in a few days, so please test it by updating your E2B drive and report any issues.

The self-extracting .exe download now uses .RAR instead of .ZIP internally because it seems to trigger far less false-positive virus warnings.

It does however mean that it cannot be used with RMPrepUSB directly by renaming it to .rar or .zip. You will have to extract the files to a new folder first if you want to use it with RMPrepUSB instead of just using the renamed file directly with RMPrepUSB - Choose Files.

Note: I have now updated RMPrepUSB with a more recent version of 7zG.exe which can extract the files from a self-extracting .rar file. So if you download RMPrepUSB v2.1.739B and rename the E2B download to have a .rar extension, then RMPrepUSB will extract the contents.