Anyone ever make a successful multiboot on a usb stick with several windows versions?

[stilly]

Yumi fails - Says it does not support my windows 7 AIO iso
Xboot says it does NOT support windows installations.

I am trying out a program called WinSetupFromUSB1.4 right now, it might do what I want...

[the86d]

I have had bad luck with bootableUSB-PERIOD.

Knoppix always seems to work from USB, without fail, if the BIOS supports it.

Slackware always seems to work when installed from DVD.

I have had issues installing Windows from USB even if making a bootable stick from the Windows utility (Windows7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool-Installer-en-US)...

Linux devs seemed to have figured more out.

(I assumed you are not talking about actually installing multiple versions of Windows ON/TO a USB stick for booting INTO Windows, OFF the stick.)

[SMR510]

Yea I am unclear of what you want also. Are you trying to actually run windows off the stick or just install the different flavors? Installing the different flavors is easy but I have never tried both 7 and 8 or 8.1 not sure if that works or not may need two sticks for that.

[stilly]

I just want a freaking installer.

I want to be able to pop it in to a computer and decide if I need to boot to a live Antivirus OS or start an installation of windows. Until now it has always been done on a dvd disc, but usb gives a hope of more. Just gotta crack the code and get the correct program.

[the86d]

Try any of these options?:

https://www.google.com/search?num=20&site=&source=hp&q=multiboot+usb+iso&oq=multiboot+usb+iso

As these: https://thepiratebay.se/search/multi...7%20-XP/0/99/0 are probably full of bad-things...

[SMR510]

I think you would need separate sticks, I have never seen anything that would allow you to select what to boot off a USB stick only a single installer. As far as windows you need to remove one file and then put it back on the stick and you can install all the versions of a single release (pro, ultimate, etc.).

[the86d]

I think you would need separate sticks, I have never seen anything that would allow you to select what to boot off a USB stick only a single installer. As far as windows you need to remove one file and then put it back on the stick and you can install all the versions of a single release (pro, ultimate, etc.).

False.
I have seen a lot that have multiples on them... I believe even Technet had a few flavors on one disc, if I recall correctly (not just squirrel "TBP" versions).

I have seen one DVD variant that has x64 and x86 installers (and different OEM flavors) on the same disc too.

[stilly]

I have TWO ISOs (that I am referring to). One is a 48 in 1 windows everything 7 activated blah blah blah.

The other is a current Windows 7 all in one w like 8 or so versions- BOTH have 64 AND 32bit.

Funny though the older 48 in 1 ISO is 4.22GB where the newer one is 4.68 I believe. Maybe 4.6

YUMI- does not like windows
Xboot does not support windows
SARDU- had issues with it and my windows I think, I gotta recheck to see WHY.
Yumi pissed me off though, it went through ALL the motions before telling me somewhere was out of space and then *****ed at me and failed to finish, and then took about 3 minutes deleting each file...
WinsetupfromUSB1.4 told me that the files needed to be dropped down to be smaller than 4GB to be put onto a FAT32 disk. But, I don;t want the ISO on it, I want the damn thing processed and put on it like a real disk... Then it would not format the disk in ntfs for me... Squirrel squirrel chasing tail dog bark... Whatever.


RMPrepUSB is what I am looking to use next.

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/72---easyboot---a-grubdos-multiboot-drive-that-is-easy-to-maintain/e2bv1

I am thinking that THAT is the one, but we shall see...

Easy2Boot advertises that it does the job; I will test this now.

Oh and yes, I have ran the CONTIGUOUS defragger and all of my ISOs that I was using were scanned and found to be contiguous. Yumi was just missing files, I am thinking that WORST CASE I will make a single yumi and linux installer, then edit the menu and copy/manually make the filepaths myself...

[the86d]

I have TWO ISOs (that I am referring to). One is a 48 in 1 windows everything 7 activated blah blah blah.

The other is a current Windows 7 all in one w like 8 or so versions- BOTH have 64 AND 32bit.

Funny though the older 48 in 1 ISO is 4.22GB where the newer one is 4.68 I believe. Maybe 4.6

YUMI- does not like windows
Xboot does not support windows
SARDU- had issues with it and my windows I think, I gotta recheck to see WHY.
Yumi pissed me off though, it went through ALL the motions before telling me somewhere was out of space and then *****ed at me and failed to finish, and then took about 3 minutes deleting each file...
WinsetupfromUSB1.4 told me that the files needed to be dropped down to be smaller than 4GB to be put onto a FAT32 disk. But, I don;t want the ISO on it, I want the damn thing processed and put on it like a real disk... Then it would not format the disk in ntfs for me... Squirrel squirrel chasing tail dog bark... Whatever.


RMPrepUSB is what I am looking to use next.

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/72---easyboot---a-grubdos-multiboot-drive-that-is-easy-to-maintain/e2bv1

I am thinking that THAT is the one, but we shall see...

Easy2Boot advertises that it does the job; I will test this now.

Oh and yes, I have ran the CONTIGUOUS defragger and all of my ISOs that I was using were scanned and found to be contiguous. Yumi was just missing files, I am thinking that WORST CASE I will make a single yumi and linux installer, then edit the menu and copy/manually make the filepaths myself...

THAT is about the "luck" I had with bootable USB stick-function.

When they work, they work well, when they don't... try something else.

[stilly]

THAT is about the "luck" I had with bootable USB stick-function.

When they work, they work well, when they don't... try something else.

I think I found an excellent one.

I am playing with it now, but it is a FULLY automatic MANUAL multiboot maker.

You grab the file, run it, it extracts about several hundred megs into a path, then you put in your usb drive and run the CMD file, it will format and copy over all the files into the usb and THEN it gets interesting.

All you have to do is drag your ISO files over into the usb stick and drop them into the proper folders. That is ABOUT all.

On bootup this program and the folders it makes boots to a menu and it will automatically add your ISOs, then it will let you scroll through several menus (there are two-three pages of menus) to find your ISO and boot from it.

It just failed me but it told me why, I have an 8gb bracelet usb stick that I am practicing on. I have it loaded down (bad thing to do without testing) and I dropped 7.xGB of iso files, apparently after you place your files on the usb stick, they MUST be contiguous within the iso, so this program runs with RMPrepUSB as well, and if you run RMPrepUSB there is a contig file checker in it, it needs to run, but it will defrag your usb drive and make it good to boot, so we will see where this goes. So far it looks like 2GB of free space for a 4.6GB file is not enough.

If this works though, this program kicks butt. It is fully customizable. It has folders to drop utilities in, antivirus live disks, linux builds, windows7, 8, 10, memtest, just about EVERYTHING that I have seen you can put on it and you can also then edit the files on the usb stick to change the wallpaper, the background texts, the menu text, just about everything. I am going to plug in a 32GB stick and see where that takes me if I can not get enough free space on this bracelet.

Oh yeah, and this program integrates with Wcontig and RMPrepUSB pretty tightly. Between these two programs you have just about EVERYTHING you need covered, formatting a usb drive to defragging it to even testing the actual size, and the website of this program is a true web, it has pages for RMPrepUSB, tutorials, videos, just about EVERYTHING. They ask for a donation if the stuff works for you, and if it does work then I will throw them a decent amount for all that they have done. The potential here is amazing. I mean, this is more fun then Nlite...

Heh, I am going back and forth between copying files and my poached chicken...

[ocabj]

As an aside, we still use recommend help desk personnel use optical boot discs for clean up of client hosts due to propagation of malware on writable boot media.

There are some USB keys with physical write block, though. Granted, you can still use regular USB keys, but we tell people to nuke the entire usb media after it's used in an untrusted host. Of course, the conundrum is where do you plug in the media to be reformatted since you then run the risk of infecting your 'clean' host by plugging in the usb media to reformat it.