35 replies to this topic

[drpeppercan]

Hi all,

 

I have this Recovery USB drive with Windows 10 from Acer that I want to include along other USB drive sources into one using YUMI Multiboot.

 

Thanks guys

[Wonko the Sane]

Well, this won't likely actually *need* to become a ISO file

 

Can you detail how/what it is?

 

I.e. is it Acer that provided you with a USB key with already made "recovery"?

Or did your Acer PC/tablet/whatever come with a tool that allowed you to save this "recovery" to aUSB stick you provided?

What does the USB contain (list of files)?

Is your PC/tablet/whatever using BIOS or UEFI? (or however does your current USB stick boot as BIOS or as UEFI)?

 

More or less - loosely - a "recovery" is made of:

1) some booting files (either BOOTMGR or BOOTMGR.EFI + their BCD(s) and possibly a number of language files)

2) a (largish) .wim file, called often boot.wim or recovery.wim

in other words, it is - generally - a WinPE of some kind.

 

So in a multiboot USB stick, it is not usually added as .ISO (but there still may be reasons why this is *needed*), but rather added, directly or indirectly, to the bootmanager used  as a .wim file.

 

Wonko

[erwan.l]

There is a tool called Acer eRecovery Management  which is installed on many Acer devices (laptops, tablets, etc).

I believe it creates a bootable media (PE based I am 99% sure of it) on USB to restore your system (and datas?) in case of failure.

 

[drpeppercan]

I found this tutorial called:

"How to Convert a Bootable USB to an .iso File"

 

One can do it by using ImgBurn. It's not exactly obvious, at first look it seems ImgBurn can only work with discs, but as this tutorial shows one can actually use it to create an ISO file from a USB drive, just what I needed. 

Now I'm using YUMI Multiboot to add it to my multiboot USB drive. It's still writing, once done I'll put it to the test and hope it'll work.

 

Thanks for your help guys

[Wonko the Sane]

etfsboot.com is the common El-Torito No-emulation image for bootable CD/DVD's, that chainloads BOOTMGR.

 

In other words the .iso you can make that way will only be able to boot under BIOS (or UEFI+CSM) and not under "pure" UEFI, at least with direct mapping/chainloading, possibly the stick (and thus the .iso made with IMGBURN) will contain also the correspondent UEFI files (that may be chainloaded by the "main" boot manager YUMI uses) still it remains to be seen if the BCD will be compliant with booting from a .iso (very likely it is, but you cannot be sure).

 

Whether this is the expected result is up to you and whether it will work, it depends on the specific machine and the way you set its firmware.

 

Wonko

[erwan.l]

Doing some publicity for CloneDisk... You can also make an iso file using the "Make iso disk image feature".

 

 

4 simple steps :

1-Pick your source folder (can be a usb disk)

2-Select your boot file (if you wish the image to be bootable) - can be MS etfsboot.com but also grldr or isolinux.bin

3-Select your filesystem (select UDF for MS based images)

4-Define your destination iso file

[drpeppercan]

Thank you both for sharing this info guys.

I'm so glad I asked : )

 

Happy holidays!

[drpeppercan]

etfsboot.com is the common El-Torito No-emulation image for bootable CD/DVD's, that chainloads BOOTMGR....

....Whether this is the expected result is up to you and whether it will work, it depends on the specific machine and the way you set its firmware.

 

 

Now I better understand what you were talking about Wonko!

My multiboot USB works just fine "with the BIOS" pc. But when I try with the newer pc with UEFI it only loads the Acer Recovery. There're still about 6 other things that failed to load.

 

Would CloneDisk be able to make a multiboot for UEFI?

If so, hopefully without much tinkering...

[drpeppercan]

Wait a second!...

Come to think of this a bit longer, I guess I have to look into 2 separate issues to ensure that in the end the USB drive will boot correctly from a UEFI pc:

 

1. How the ISO file was made. Assuming it was made like in my case: using a utility program like ImgBurn to extract the needed files from a Bootable USB key.

 

2. And finally, how the Multiboot USB key was put together.

 

This being said, assuming I'm right, what software would you recommend I use?

 

Thanks guys

[sbaeder]

the issue is that any of the older recovery type things you might want to boot just aren't EFI compatible.  This is why many laptops have to be set to compatible mode (not secure boot) to be able to use them.

 

So you are right, it is the #1 issue (above) that is more than likely the issue.

[drpeppercan]

I am looking into this tutorial: 

UEFI MULTI - Make Multi-Boot USB-Drive

[drpeppercan]

Well, I didn't go very far with that tool

It had a Trojan virus!

 

Then I found Easy2Boot, except it seems that instead of being a tool, it's rather a gathering of many different tools that help you creating a multiboot USB drive. But to do it one has to read, and read, and read, and eventually get it done, if everything goes smoothly.

It's rather overwhelming, enough to put a rookie like me off.

I'm not too sure I want to do this anymore!

[Wonko the Sane]

Sure , you can take either the blue pill or the red one:

http://www.imdb.com/...uotes/qt0324307

 

However EASY2Boot is pretty much straightforward - at least for such a basic usage - and Stee6375 has made quite a few tutorials and also videos illustrating it.

 

But, before that. and in a nutshell, a .iso is a "container" (as a matter of fact a byte-by-byte copy of an actual CD/DVD physical media).

 

What actually boots and runs are the contents of that container.

 

Now it makes a lot of sense, if you already have such a container, to devise a way to use that container unmodified inside another container (the USB stick and its filesystem).

 

On the other hand, if you don't have already such  container it makes more sense to transfer its contents to the actual container (the USB stick and its filesystem).

 

And in order to do so you will need to learn what these contents are and how they can be "assembled" in the new container.

 

There are however no Trojans in Wimb's excellent tool, most probably it is the usual false positive triggered by this or that utility.(most probably an AutoIt one, such as GetWaikTools, it is rather common or maybe by a combination with the 7-zip sfx ).

See here:

http://reboot.pro/to...drive/?p=205248

 

Wonko

[erwan.l]

Wait a second!...
Come to think of this a bit longer, I guess I have to look into 2 separate issues to ensure that in the end the USB drive will boot correctly from a UEFI pc:

1. How the ISO file was made. Assuming it was made like in my case: using a utility program like ImgBurn to extract the needed files from a Bootable USB key.

2. And finally, how the Multiboot USB key was put together.

This being said, assuming I'm right, what software would you recommend I use?

Thanks guys

Make an iso that will boot both on bios or uefi is pretty straightforward : you can use mkisofs (command line tool) or a GUI (see below).
However, question is (as Sbaeder highlighted) : is your acer recoverry software EF compatible ?

[erwan.l]

Would CloneDisk be able to make a multiboot for UEFI?

If so, hopefully without much tinkering...

 

CloneDisk 'make iso' feature does not yet handle multiboot iso.

This is work in progress thus.

In the meantime look at my previous post (mkisofs).

[wimb]

UEFI_MULTI_85.exe is reported as broken, since it would contain a Trojan virus

However, it is a false positive virus warning due to using a SFX Selfextractor !!

 

So I removed the SFX Selfextractor and simply use zip compression so that the problem is gone.

 

Download UEFI_MULTI-85.zip from

 

https://1drv.ms/f/s!...na78xaVPrpcR2sA

[drpeppercan]

Sure , you can take either the blue pill or the red one:

http://www.imdb.com/...uotes/qt0324307 ...

 

...There are however no Trojans in Wimb's excellent tool, most probably it is the usual false positive triggered by this or that utility.(most probably an AutoIt one, such as GetWaikTools, it is rather common or maybe by a combination with the 7-zip sfx ).

See here:

http://reboot.pro/to...drive/?p=205248

 

Wonko

 

Wonko, thanks a bunch for taking the time to explain all that. It helps very much.

And sorry about the ranting ...

[drpeppercan]

Make an iso that will boot both on bios or uefi is pretty straightforward : you can use mkisofs (command line tool) or a GUI (see below).
However, question is (as Sbaeder highlighted) : is your acer recoverry software EF compatible ?

 

 

erwan,

 

This is great, I see you made this one eh? 

Thanks for sharing

[drpeppercan]

 

UEFI_MULTI_85.exe is reported as broken, since it would contain a Trojan virus

However, it is a false positive virus warning due to using a SFX Selfextractor !!

 

So I removed the SFX Selfextractor and simply use zip compression so that the problem is gone.

 

Download UEFI_MULTI-85.zip from

 

https://1drv.ms/f/s!...na78xaVPrpcR2sA

 

 

Nice!

Thank you for doing this wimb

 

Btw, I still got many Trojan warnings for Tilden and Bitrep. But I guess I'll go ahead...

[Wonko the Sane]

@erwan.l

To be picky (as I am ) etfsboot.com "will call BOOTMGR" (that will use a  \boot\BCD) whilst efisys.bin contains either a BOOTX64.EFI or a BOOTIA32.EFI (or both) that are called by the UEFI (and that will use a \efi\microsoft\boot\BCD).

 

No bootmgr.efi was used, let alone harmed in the making of  .

 

Wonko

[erwan.l]

@erwan.l

To be picky (as I am ) etfsboot.com "will call BOOTMGR" (that will use a  \boot\BCD) whilst efisys.bin contains either a BOOTX64.EFI or a BOOTIA32.EFI (or both) that are called by the UEFI (and that will use a \efi\microsoft\boot\BCD).

 

No bootmgr.efi was used, let alone harmed in the making of  .

 

Wonko

 

Correct, sorry for being vague on that one.

Indeed, there is no such thing as bootmgr.efi but rather bootx64.efi or bootia32.efi.

 

And now, I realise I learn every day : by checking efisys.bin (1440k), I realise that indeed it does contain the whole bootmgr.

Had never realised that ! 

Thanks for that

Useful tip actually as I have some code out there possibly tricked by a bootsector that big...

[Wonko the Sane]

 
And now, I realise I learn every day : by checking efisys.bin (1440k), I realise that indeed it does contain the whole bootmgr.
Had never realised that ! 
Thanks for that
Useful tip actually as I have some code out there possibly tricked by a bootsector that big...

Yep but the efisys.bin is not at all' a bootsector it is just a FAT file system containing the "default named" bootloader , brought to you by the same people that has provided 3 mb boot.sdi's and has recycled DOS boot floppies with deleted files for years.


Wonko

[cdob]

I have this Recovery USB drive with Windows 10 from Acer

Does this recovery USB drive holds backup files too?
Does this recovery USB drive reads data from a recovery partion at local hard disk?
Which data size is occupied at the USB drive?

If there are more than 1 GB data on the USB drive, then there are backup files too.
In that case, there are two tasks: boot the new USB drive and the recovery routine has to find the backup files.
Can you show a file list? 'dir /s'

[drpeppercan]

cdob,

 

It's a 16Gb drive, with 11Gb used.

This is some of its contents:

 

I hope this tells you enough.

 

So I finally came around to disable the antivirus to run UEFI-Multi.

Will I be able to add more ISO files to the same USB booting drive? Like YUMI?

[drpeppercan]

I was just trying to add Ubuntu as the 2nd ISO, but it told me that the ISO type is incompatible