steve6375

E2B v1.04 now released. Mass storage driver detection and F6 virtual floppy creation is now automatic - no need to press F6. Just install from an unmodified XP install ISO directly to any AHCI system.

Easy2Boot allows you to have any number of Windows install ISO (from XP to Win8/Server 2012) - just copy the ISOs over and boot. If you are using a USB HDD you also need to connect a small 'helper' auxilliary flash drive too for Vista/7/8 installs. Easy2Boot will also boot most linux LiveCD ISOs - just copy them on.

Easy2Boot is now 'released' (currently v1.1) and a DPMS2 update pack is also available which automatically detects what mass storage driver is required for XP and makes the F6 floppy disk images. So now you can install from a vanilla XP Install ISO straight to a SRS (SATA/RAID/SCSI) system without the need to add the mass storage driver to the ISO first - no pressing of F6 is required by the user. v 1.2 of E2B will include the DPMS2 update pack plus a few other small tweaks soon...

Easy2Boot BETA30 is now out - I am hoping to officially release Easy2Boot soon and remove the BETA status. cheers Steve

Just wanted to say that Easy2Boot BETA20 is now out and Easy2Boot v1 is very near 'full release' stage. The project page is here. Comments so far have been encouraging from other forums... As well as installing Windows direct from ISOs on a USB drive, you can boot pretty much any Linux LiveCD ISO too (and even some with persistence)! nyquist - 'Easy2boot is awesome. Thanks for sharing this software with us.' Rootman - 'This is one of the coolest things I've run across in a long time. You guys have GOT to check this out.' maanu - please accept my congratulations on coding this beautiful tool.. my 1st experience was GREAT . it worked flawlessly on very 1st try (win8 64-bit install) Jkplayschess - This is a fantastic tool! I rarely get excited about things, but I'm following the development of this closely! sebus - The solution works VERY well indeed. Tested on W7 x64 so far Weedy - I gotta say I'm annoyed that this tool seems to work exactly as advertised! This tool is a fantastic piece of software.

Once you have made the Easy2Boot USB Flash drive (or USB HDD), you simply copy over all your boot ISOs or images (using Windows Explorer or any other method - no special utility required). The current menu system caters for any number of Windows install ISO files ranging from XP Home to Server 2012. You can also just copy on your WinPE ISOs, rescue ISOs and even linux LiveCD ISOs. For Windows install ISOs, just put them in the correct folder. All the payload files that you add are listed in the dynamically created menu system every time you boot from the USB drive. If you make a USB HDD Multiboot drive, then for Windows Vista and later OS's , you also need to insert a USB flash drive containing 3 files at the same time as booting from the USB HDD. For installing XP from USB using an XP ISO, E2B now automatically detects and creates F6 virtual floppy disks with the correct mass storage drivers for your system so you can install from an unmodified XP ISO straight to an AHCI/SCSI/RAID system. Check it out here. Here is the Easy2Boot YouTube video to demo it and explain it all.

Thanks for the changes. I noticed that NAT was now fixed. Something I don't quite understand still about pstart. If I add to the pstart folder in the build directory e.g. Projects\Win8PESE\Apps\Portable\Pstart\fred, and add a new folder and exe - when I click on the script small blue arrow, the script runs and it causes the files Pstart.exe and PStart.xml to appear in the Projects\Win8PESE\Apps\Portable\Pstart folder. But the xml only contains Explorer++ even though it has a new timestamp (so appears to be generated by the script). I was sort of expecting the script to look at all exe's under Projects\Win8PESE\Apps\Portable\Pstart and create an xml for them so that when the ISO runs, it lists all exe's??? Even if I delete the Explorer++ folder completely from Projects\Win8PESE\Apps\Portable\Pstart , the pstart.xml is still generated and still contains an entry for Explorer++?? (I don't really understand the Pstart script so I am not sure if this is possible or if this is how it is supposed to work???). I will check out the external Pstart folder new feature - nice!

Tutorial is now 100. No problem with you adding links to it. I will investigate adding of extra scripts soon and include it. Any more comments welcome! Thanks Steve

I ran Update and it works now! thanks.

Will try tomorrow - zzzzzz too!

Thanks for looking at these issues - I am writing a Tutorial here, but found these issues and so I will wait until they are fixed. Please feel free to comment on the Tutorial if you get time.

I seem to be having problems with Win8PESE.ini now. I thought that all that was required was to put the path to the ISO in this file and put it in the root of the USB drive - however, this does not seem to work and I get the yellow warning triangle on the Desktop UNLESS I actually build the ISO with the path set in Finals - Create ISO as well.??

One more Q please I am making an ISO, but booting via grub4dos from a USB stick containing just the ISO. How would I include apps so that PStart will list them. I tried adding the exe to the Pstart script form and I can get the app to appear on the Desktop and in the Start Menu and it runs from there - however, the PStart,xml is not compiled with the app in it and so the entry is not listed in the Pstart form when launched.

So are you saying that whenever a new WinBuilder Project is downloaded and launched, the first thing a user should do is click on the Download button to get the latest version and maybe change option to Minimum/Recommended/Complete? The Update WinPE SE (Exact and Secure) is not in the Utils folder by default on a new (82) Project - is it better to add this in as default for the project and instruct users to run this first (or is it automatically run?). It seems to download a lot of files the first time it is run - is 82 very out of date?

Hi OK - my bad for using non-Release version of Win8 - it works with the 90-day evaluation version. I have dabbled a few times with WinBuilder as it looks very powerful but I have always had difficulties using it and given it up several times! For instance, if this project is source build specific - why doesn't it check the source Win8 files first? I am trying to use grub4dos to map the iso (located at \_ISO\Windows\Win8PE_x86.iso) and run it. Here are my issues. I tried booting from ISO but had a problem as the Y: drive was not found (which was not unexpected!). There is a warning triangle on the Desktop (good idea!) which talks about changing the ISO, but the MountPEMedia.ini instructions are not very clear at all! The MountPEmedia.ini file has no path in the IsoInfo/IsoName section and so it is unclear whether to specify \_ISO\Windows\Win8PE_x86.iso or _ISO\Windows\Win8PE_x86.iso! The help text is not very helpful! A simple statement to say that ImDisk is used and it expects to find the un-renamed iso file in the root of the boot drive by default would have been useful! Also the instructions say to change the path in the Finals - CreateISO script - but again the path to use is unclear as there is already an ISO folder under Project. Also changing this path in WinBuilder makes no difference, the ISO is still expected in the root of the USB drive -so I am unclear as to what... 'Rebuild by giving your personal Iso file name\Subfolder in the script Finals\Create ISO.' actually means? The ini file also talks about modifying Win8PESE.ini to specify your personal ISO filename - but no clue as to if this file already exists or if I have to make it and where it should be located or what it's format is! I eventually found the file in the ISO folder under the main build folder, so I guess I need to copy this file to the root of the USB drive and modify it it manually? I was kind of expecting that if I specified the target path of the ISO file as %BaseDir%\_ISO\Windows, then the Win8PESE.ini file would be set to \_ISO\Windows\Win8PE_x86.iso for me? Line 22 in the MountPEMedia.ini file would be far more helpful if changed to say... OK - now another Q (sorry) The Win8PE Project Index has some files to download - e.g. Main Configuration (config.script), Images Configuration (images.script), etc. Where do I put these files and how do I add them to the build? The WinBuilder CHM is very helpful about how to make scripts, etc. but not very helpful about how to start a simple project and then add to it. Thanks for your help. Once I can figure out WinBuilder and this project, I hope to put a tutorial on my site for other WinBuilder newbies to follow!

Thought I would try an x86 Win8 PE build using this project. My OS is Win7 Ult x64. The build (downloaded 2012-01-30 1800 GMT) worked OK (a few warnings in log file), but the resulting ISO did not boot in VMWare Player or QEMU. I did not change any of the settings and I extracted the Win8 ISO to a folder using 7Zip first (and also tried it from a mounted ISO using ImDisk). I never seem to have much luck with WinBuilder... It starts to boot and I get the dots going round in a circle and then 'Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart'. Warnings were: (1-files.Script) FileCopy [%BaseDir%\Mount\Win8PESE\Source\InstallWimSrc\Windows\winsxs\manifests\*_microsoft.windows.c..-controls.resources_6595b64144ccf1df_5.82.9200.16384_en-US*] to: [%BaseDir%\Target\Win8PESE\Windows\winsxs\manifests]: No matching file found (1-files.Script) FileCopy [%BaseDir%\Mount\Win8PESE\Source\InstallWimSrc\Windows\winsxs\manifests\*_microsoft.windows.c..-controls.resources_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.9200.16384_en-US*] to: [%BaseDir%\Target\Win8PESE\Windows\winsxs\manifests]: No matching file found (1-files.Script) FileCopy [%BaseDir%\Mount\Win8PESE\Source\BootWimSrc\Windows\winsxs\manifests\*_microsoft-windows-comctl32-v5.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_en-US*] to: [%BaseDir%\Target\Win8PESE\Windows\winsxs\manifests]: No matching file found (1-files.Script) FileCopy [%BaseDir%\Mount\Win8PESE\Source\BootWimSrc\Windows\winsxs\manifests\*_microsoft-windows-comdlg32.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_en-US*] to: [%BaseDir%\Target\Win8PESE\Windows\winsxs\manifests]: No matching file found (1-files.Script) FileCopy [%BaseDir%\Mount\Win8PESE\Source\BootWimSrc\Windows\winsxs\manifests\*_microsoft-windows-comdlg32_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_*] to: [%BaseDir%\Target\Win8PESE\Windows\winsxs\manifests]: No matching file found

1. Try the Quick Size Test in RMPrepUSB 2. If it passes, try CLEAN and then format as NTFS + Boot as HDD 3. Run WIndows chkdisk on the drive Now follow jaclaz's suggestions.

0x8280 is 80h if the boot device is a hard disk (80h=first hard disk, 00h=first floppy disk). Thus if the BIOS booted the USB drive as a hard disk, then swap over hd1 (the internal hard disk) to hd0 (the first hard disk) and vice versa - so that the OS will initially see the first hard disk as the internal hard disk. If the BIOS booted the USB drive as a floppy (admittedly highly unlikely in my experience!) then don't try to swap over hd0 and hd1 as there may not be an hd1 and the command will fail. Could you try title Part 2 Install OEM XP - GUI Mode map /dellsp4.iso (0xff) errorcheck off debug on checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd0) (hd1) checkrange 0x80 read 0x8280 && map (hd1) (hd0) echo about to hook map --hook echo about to use rootnoverify rootnoverify (hd0,0) echo about to chainload chainloader (hd0)+1 echo about to boot from hd0... pause and see what happens pls?

Hi To install onto the mainboard SATA connected drive in AHCI mode, follow Tutorial #30 at www.rmprepusb.com (boot from USB). I think your mainboard has a series 6 H61 Intel chipset, so after pressing F6, choose 'Intel® Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller' from the list (as well as firadisk and WinVBlock drivers) and then proceed as in the tutorial. If you have any problems, get the PCI ID using the included menu entry - it should be 8086 1C02 - if it is different then check the list in the Tutorial to see what driver you need to select. The board has USB 2 ports, so it should all work (you can't use a USB 3 port as USB 3 drivers are not in vanilla XP). HTH Steve

#43 now uses Firadisk and ImDisk. Firadisk does not seem to work with WinPE 4/Server2012 setup for some reason, so if this fails to mount the ISO then ImDisk is used. For XP tutorial (#30) it is probably 'purer' to use just one ramdisk driver (either FiraDisk or WinVBlock) but in my experience, just using one all the time for all systems did not work - i.e. Firadisk worked on some systems but not others, similarly WinVBlock worked on some systems but not all - hence I suggest that for your first attempt (since you don't know which ones will work) you load both drivers in the hope that at least one will be able to load the ISO (sledgehammer v. walnut)! If for some reason there is a problem, then load just one of them and see if just using a single driver is any better.

Not to sure what is going wrong but this menu makes bootmgr load BC2 not BCD. I can't see any mention of making a BC2 in your posts? title Windows 64-bit OS Install Menu (bc2)\nIf you want to install a 64-bit OS map --mem /bootmgr (rd) write --offset=0x105E (rd)+1 \xEB\x08 write --offset=0x54696 (rd)+1 2 chainloader (rd)+1 root () Once you are booted to WInPE, can you detect whether you have booted to a 32-bit OS or a 64-bit OS (look at SET variables?).

Hi I decided to test this by booting to a vanilla WinPE v3 ISO (ver 6.1.7077) from a USB flash drive and the trying to use R-Click to mount an XP ISO - but nothing seems to happen after I select the ISO from the file dialogue window and click Open. I also tried running imdiskinst.exe and got a 'can't start because crtdll.dll is missing' message. Is WinPE v3 not supported? P.S. When installing Win 7 to VHD you say - requires Windows 7 as OS and Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise or Server 2008 R2 as Source Why not 7 HP or Pro? What is the restriction?

Most of these chipset specific utilities for reprogramming USB Flash drives only work under XP. They don't work under Vista/7/SVR2k8 as the drivers are written for XP.

In the multi-iso autounattend.xml method here you just need to copy two files over and then make the ISO.