Its webpage said I could “Simply drag and drop ISO files into XBoot window” from a menu of possibilities. I decided not to make the time investment to master EasyBoot unless there was no alternative. Among other things, it looked like they recommended experimenting with possible builds in a virtual machine, so as to get a working prototype before burning it to DVD. What I did gather from that post (itself dating from 2011), and from other browsing, was that EasyBoot was still largely oriented toward Windows XP and that it would require considerable manual tinkering to identify, extract, and use key files from a downloaded ISO (i.e., the large files from which it would be possible to install programs, burn discs, and/or fill a YUMI drive). software more than 5 years old.” In other words, the help I would find in the forum would be a real grab-bag. Here’s what I saw in a forum post that sought to integrate assorted bits of advice to create a sort of user’s manual for EasyBoot: “Some tutorials may not work with current versions of software since the tutorials deal with. On further inspection, though, I was not sure that accumulated lore would actually be helpful. Judging from the dates of various posts there, EasyBoot had been in existence for at least ten years. Then I browsed the EasyBoot forum for advice. I downloaded and installed the free (trial?) version. Fortunately, it developed that buying and registering a copy would provide certain benefits but was not absolutely necessary. This was more of an experimental journey, not amenable to high fees. Not an unreasonable price, assuming the software worked, but at that price I might just try a different brand of mSATA drive. At first, I thought I was going to have to pay $29.95 for a copy. Next, my search led me to a discussion that led me to EasyBoot. It identified SARDU as an infected tool, and obtained my permission to remove it. I thought I had gotten safely past that, but then, within minutes after completing the SARDU installation, my antivirus software was flashing an alarm. SARDU wanted to install multiple pieces of crapware during its installation process. To install multiple tools on a single DVD, the first thing I tried was Sardu. My question at that point was whether there was a useful tool that would do with DVDs what YUMI did with USB drives. I got the idea of using a DVD because I saw that I could successfully boot a single-purpose DVD (e.g., a Linux live CD). Another post discusses my efforts to create a UEFI-friendly multiboot USB drive.)Īt the moment, I decided to see if I could develop a DVD that, like the YUMI drive, would contain multiple bootable operating systems and other tools. (Later, I would suspect that the problem may have been that I was attempting to boot a UEFI system with a BIOS-based USB drive. Note that YUMI itself did not seem to be malfunctioning: before installing the mSATA SSD, I had used some of these same YUMI USB drives to boot the ThinkPad successfully. There may also have been non-YUMI multiboot tools that would have succeeded with a USB thumb drive, on this machine, where YUMI failed. There would be the problem that MicroSD cards could pop out easily: if that happened to the Windows program drive, the system would come to a swift halt.) (I also wondered whether it was possible to install Windows 7 on a MicroSD card, and enjoy fast boots from that, in which case I could remove the mSATA SSD. One alternative might have been to try booting something like a YUMI drive from a MicroSD card. Unfortunately, the ThinkPad had only one 2.5″ drive bay, and that was filled with a hard drive offering larger and cheaper storage. Possibly a 2.5″ solid state drive (SSD) would have had the same problem, or possibly that would have solved the problem. It appeared that this problem had begun when I installed an mSATA SSD drive to speed up Windows 7 boot times on the ThinkPad. (Later, I would have the same problem with my Acer laptop.) It didn’t seem to be a problem with the USB flash drives, or with the tools I was installing onto them. I reconfigured several different USB drives, in several different ways, and still had the same problem: the cursor would just flash at me, and virtually nothing would boot. (It might be necessary to hit Esc, F2, Del, or some other key at bootup to get into the BIOS setup options.) F12 would give me a menu listing these other tools that I had installed onto a USB jump drive using YUMI.īut now I had a problem: my Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E430 was not responding well to bootable USB drives. For instance, if I wanted to run Linux, DBAN, Acronis, the Windows 7 system repair disc, or certain emergency antivirus tools in a standalone mode outside of Windows, I would insert the YUMI drive and hit F12 one or more times when the machine started to boot up. Normally, I used a YUMI USB drive to boot my computer into assorted operating systems and tools other than Windows 7.
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