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.