Easy2boot Windows 98 Se
Myong Killings
The demands of today's expert software users are always increasing. Whether you are an IT expert working with a wide variety of clients or a savvy hobbyist, having a multiboot USB makes the job so much easier. There are dozens of multiboot USB tools on the market, but one of the best is Easy2Boot available at www.easy2boot.com. Let's take a detailed look into what makes Easy2Boot one of the best applications for setting up and maintaining a multiboot USB.
Let's start with the basics. A multiboot USB tool is a software application that turns your everyday USB stick into a tech geek's Swiss Army Knife. Multiboot USBs allow the user to boot many dozens of bootable programs and operating systems from a single USB drive. These programs and operating systems run without needing to be installed on the computer you plug it into. This means that you can safely run programs and test or repair systems without leaving a trace on the host computer.
There are as many reasons to use a multiboot USB tool as there are programs you can run off of them! The most common is needing to boot into a wide range of operating systems. If you ever need to try a specific Linux distro or install Windows, this will be the most time-saving way to get that done. It's way easier than installing and dual booting dozens of operating systems or, and I shudder to think of this, hot swapping dedicated operation system hard drives!
Other reasons to use a multiboot USB are for people interested in the more clinical side of computing. If you're working in IT, penetration testing, or system recovery, a multiboot USB is mandatory. These tools allow you to run any number of software without "touching" the host computer. So if you have a machine that can't boot, is crushed by malware or you're troubleshooting it, a multiboot USB tool is where it's at!
The old days of making a multiboot USB were a major hassle. You had to install each ISO, Live CD, and .bin individually. The USB boot loaders were often fickle and required regular updating to keep them working when new ISOs were released - Easy2Boot gets us past all of this. With Easy2Boot, all you need to do is perform a one time install of the Easy2Boot software onto a USB flash drive, and then you're done! Really! After that installing your software packages or ISO files is a breeze. You just need to plug in your Easy2Boot USB and drag and drop your desired software (e.g., ISO file) into the right directories, and then you are good to go! Easy2Boot dynamically creates a new boot menu every time you load it, so there's no updating needed on your end. If you want to swap software payloads, say you want to replace or add the latest Ubuntu distro, all you need to do is drag and drop the new files and delete the old ones (or leave them and have both!) Easy2Boot lives up to the "easy" in its name! Easy2Boot will boot 99% of all Linux 'LiveCD' ISOs and is not version specific. Easy2Boot uses the NTFS filesystem, so you can also store all your files on the same USB drive even if they are over 4GB in size.
An Easy2Boot v2 USB drive can UEFI-boot to the 'agFM' grub2 menu system and can directly load ISO/VHD/IMG/EFI files (if the 'agFM' UEFI boot files were added to Partition 2 when it was created). In addition, you can convert a payload to a .imgPTN partition image file using the MPI Tool Kit (a Windows utility). You then copy the .imgPTN file onto the E2B USB drive. Using the boot menu, you can then select any one of your .imgPTN files. This will then cause the Easy2Boot partition 1 to be instantly replaced by the contents of the .imgPTN file (you can instead use the Switch_E2B.exe utility to switch in any .imgPTN file). Once the .imgPTN file has been 'switched-in,' you can UEFI-boot (even Secure UEFI-boot) directly from the USB drive. In this way, you can have hundreds of Secure UEFI-bootable images such as Windows Installers, Linux Installers, Linux Live OS's, WindowsToGo OS, MemTest86, KonBoot, etc. all on the same USB drive.
So you've added dozens of operating systems, a fully functional Kali Linux pen testing setup, countless drivers, etc. In short, you've built the true all-purpose multiboot USB, but now you have to update Easy2Boot. I can hear your trepidation. You don't want to lose all that work by risking an update and, thankfully, with Easy2Boot, you don't have to! Just download and run the latest version and click on the Update E2B Drive button.
Here's an Easy2Boot pro tip: You can also use Easy2Boot's UPDATE_E2B_DRIVE.cmd utility to spot-fix any problems you might be having with your multiboot USB stick. If you suspect some files on the USB drive are missing or corrupt, run the update utility and 9 out of 10 times that will repair E2B and get your multiboot USB back online and running at full force!
I'm sure you've all experienced this, but once you become even slightly tech-savvy everyone you know will start calling you about their email not working or that "weird thing that happens whenever they open Outlook." I started learning pen testing and system recovery for my own use, and now it seems like everyone in town knows I'm the unofficial "IT guy." Honestly, with tools like Easy2Boot's multiboot USB, I don't mind it one bit.
Easy2Boot is so intuitive and user-friendly it's fun to use (and it is fully configurable too and comes with its own Menu Editor so you can design your own menu system). The first install is lead by a convenient graphic interface, and adding software payloads such as ISO files to the drive is as simple as copying the ISO file onto the USB drive using drag-and-drop. From there, plug in the drive and fire up whatever software the situation calls for! (You can even sneak your favorite game on here to play on the fly!)
I downloaded the entire offline installer package and put it on a usb drive with easy2boot for installing windows xp. It's fantastic for setting up offline systems and knocking out those obscure chipset drivers that can be such a pain. Had pretty mixed results with Audigy or SBLive drivers though.
some drivers its better to install manually are things like gpu. also sometimes its best not to mess with Raid/Sata/ide drivers as if the wrong or a buggy driver is installed it can sometimes brick ur install and then u gotta start over from scratch.
99% of the time it works fine. there is the odd time that a driver it installs is buggy though and can brick things.
some drivers its better to install manually are things like gpu. also sometimes its best not to mess with Raid/Sata/ide drivers as if the wrong or a buggy driver is installed it can sometimes brick ur install and then u gotta start over from scratch.
u can use it for anything from windows xp all the way to windows 11. not sure if it works on windows 2000 i never tired that. it def don't work on any windows 9x systems unfortunately.
Yeh I've seen Phil use it a number of times.
Personally I like the challenge of tracking down drivers for my builds and prefer to install bare minimum on my builds.
But I get not everyone is strange like me and while I don't agree with everything Phil does he typically does his homework on stuff like this so would think its fine.
The real question is why not? With a multiboot USB, you can carry virtually everything you may ever need with you. If you are anything like me, you may get many requests for different problems everyday. These requests may involve new software installs, OS installs, malware problems, or the "I don't want to turn my computer on because ..." requests. With a multiboot USB, you are ready for any of these, whether they are initiated by Windows, MAC or Linux users.
There are many multiboot utilities out there, so one would think that the end products would be about the same, they aren't. More importantly, making and using the utilities are vastly different. Whether it is ease of use you are looking for, or functionality, easy2boot fits the bill! Adding items to a basic install of easy2boot is as simple as dragging the image/payload file (ISOs are generally easiest) into the correct directory, using the utilities provided for creating a new menu item and it is done. I have gone further in using the utility provided to create text files describing each image (otherwise they appear in the boot menu as just the image name (e.g. "avg_arl_cdi_all_120_140203a7055.iso" instead of "AVG Anti Malware boot Disk"). I prefer the more readable version. This becomes especially important when you have images with similar or the same name. It was also especially important for my images of paragon software ISOs. the ISOs have names like Paragon-233-BSE_WinInstallSNU_10.1.19.16299_000. This happens to be a fairly old version of Paragon Hard Disk Manager (2014), so the text file that goes along with it reads that the title of the image is "Paragon HDM 14."
Installing E2B is fairly easy to do and there is a great guide on the easy2boot website. The basics are download the software, run the utility on a relatively fast USB that is no more than 137gb (I use 128gb sticks). Once installed to the USB, copy the image/payload files to the correct directories (you can make your own directories as well using the utility that somes with the software to create "Submenus"). There are 2 main files in the root directory that will make the USB contiguous for you and boot to the device almost as if you had booted from it directly.
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