Multiboot flash drive without programs. Create a bootable USB flash drive using the Multiboot USB program
MultiBoot USB. How to create a multiboot flash drive?
Multiboot flash drive (MultiBoot USB) is designed for installing operating Window systems s XP/2000/Vista/7/8
and downloading recovery images and utilities directly from USB storage.
Utilities included in the installation package of a multiboot flash drive:
- Acronis Disk Director & True Image
— Working with sections hard drives
Symantec Ghost v11.0 - Working with hard drive partitions
Windows XPE - Mini version
Windows 7PE - Mini version
Elcomsoft System Recovery Pro v3.0 Build 466— Password recovery and change
FreeDOS - Boot in mode command line, includes DOS-Navigator and VC
Universal boot disk v3.7— Access to NTFS partitions in MS-DOS
NT Password & Registry Editor— Changing the password and editing the registry
Active@ Boot Disk Professional v2.1- Recovery deleted files
QuickTech Pro v5.8 - Testing and diagnostics of hardware and its components
MemTest86+ v4.20 - Testing and diagnostics RAM
MHDD v4.6 - Testing and diagnostics of hard drives
Victoria v3.52 - Testing and service of IDE and ATA HDD
HDD Regenerator v2011 - Damage repair ( bad sectors) on HDD
Skins are located in the Boot folder. The default skins are “Moonlight” and “Rainbow”. When replacing skins, copy them to the Boot folder and write the name of the new skins in the files menu.lst and menu_2.lst in the line: “gfxmenu /Boot / Moonlight”.
Installation and work with the program.
To install the program on your computer, you need to run the multiboot flash drive installer - Multiboot flash drive.exe. After unpacking the SFX archive and finishing copying the files, the program will automatically start and the selector menu will open with a set of all the necessary utilities and programs for creating a multiboot flash drive. After installing the program, two shortcuts are created: on the “Desktop” and in the “Start/All Programs/Utilities” menu.
If your computer has Windows 7 operating system or Windows Vista, the program must be launched as an administrator.
1. Formatting a USB flash drive.
Before you start creating a multiboot flash drive, you need to format it.
Launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, select the file system NTFS (preferably) or FAT32, check the box for “Quick Format” and click on “Start”.
2. Install the grub4dos bootloader on a flash drive.
After formatting the flash drive, proceed to installing the grub4dos bootloader. Launch the Grub4Dos Installer utility, select “Disk” in the “Device Name” window, find your flash drive and click on “Install”.
If everything was done correctly, then in the window that opens, an inscription with the text “The MBR/BS has been...” will appear.
Press “Enter” and go to the next menu item.
3. Installing the Windows PE/XPE distribution kit on a flash drive.
Iso image of Windows XPE USB WIM using the utility Daemon Tools, UltraISO or Alcohol. Launch the PeToUSB utility, below in the “Source Path To Built BartPE/WinPE Files” field indicate the path to our virtual disk. Check the box only in the “Enable File Copy” window and click “Start”.
4.1. Installing the Windows XP distribution on a flash drive.
We mount an iso image of Windows XP onto a virtual disk using the Daemon Tools, UltraISO or Alcohol utility. We launch the WinSetupFromUSB utility, check the box in the “Windows 2000/XP/2003 Setup” window, specify the path to our virtual disk and click “GO”.
4.2. Installing the Windows 7 distribution on a flash drive.
We mount an iso image of Windows 7 onto a virtual disk using the Daemon Tools, UltraISO or Alcohol utility. We launch the WinSetupFromUSB utility, check the box in the “Vista / 7 / Server 2008 - Setup /PE/RecoveryISO” window, specify the path to our virtual disk and click “GO”.
5. Copying files and utilities to a flash drive.
Using the “Browse...” button, indicate the path to the flash drive and click “Eject”. To the question: “Do you want to replace existing file? click “Yes”.
After copying files to the flash drive is completed, it can be tested and checked for functionality.
Attention!!! Completing points 1; 2 and 5 are a must!!!
Any of points 3; 4.1 and 4.2, if you don't need it, you can skip it.
Testing a multiboot flash drive.
To test and see what we got, run the WinSetupFromUSB utility from the selector menu, check the box in the “Test in QEMU” window, click “GO” and enjoy
If everything went well, the bootable flash drive interface will look like this:
Distributions for bootable flash drive: https://yadi.sk/d/6nBtL8wDuW9ek
I hope this article helped you.
A multiboot flash drive is needed to store a set of utilities and distributions that will help install operating system, restore it and more. You can create a multi bootable USB flash drive with multiple Windows OS, other OS and utilities. To create a multi-boot flash drive with several OS and programs you will need:
- Flash drive (preferably at least 8 GB)
- Operating system images (Ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10)
- Disk images with programs
- Antiviruses
- Programs for multiboot flash drives, etc.
How to make a multiboot USB flash drive with Windows:
- Download an image for a multiboot flash drive (Windows, Ubuntu, etc.)
- Download the RMPrepUSB program from the official website
Go to the website, scroll down the page a little and download the latest version. Install it and run it. After starting, you need to select your flash drive from the list of disks. We advise you to remove all other USB drives so as not to accidentally overwrite them. Now you need to set the program settings as shown in the screenshot.
- Make sure that you have identified exactly the flash drive that you are going to make multiboot
- Leave the size as default. Volume label - arbitrary name (in Latin). Check the box “Do not ask questions”
- "Boot sector" must be WinPEv2
- NTFS file system (supports images larger than 4 GB), Boot as HDD option (for booting from a hard drive)
The next step is to download the “framework” of the future bootable flash drive. This is necessary so that you do not have to manually configure the menu of the future bootable flash drive. Follow the link.
It's time to return to the RMPrepUSB program, check the box at the very bottom and click on the "Browse" button (click "Yes" in the window that appears) - specify the path to the folder with the unpacked files. Now all that remains is to click on the “Prepare disk” button and “OK”.
The time it takes to create a bootable USB flash drive varies from 2 to 5 minutes. It all depends on the “speed characteristics” that your flash drive has.
Don’t rush to close the RMPrepUSB program! After waiting for the bootable flash drive to be created, all that remains is to install the bootloader. To do this:
- Click on the "Install Grub4DOS" button
- In the next window, click “No” so that the MBR is not installed
- Click "OK" to install the bootloader
Easily create a multiboot flash drive with MultiBoot USB. In order to make a multiboot flash drive with MultiBoot USB, you need to download full version from torrent. Multiboot USB flash drive from Windows:
- After downloading the torrent, format the flash drive as a file Ntfs system
- Run Grub4dos Installer, select the USB flash drive in the Disk field and click Install
- Add the operating system image to the USB flash drive. In WinsetupFromUsb, select a flash drive from the list, check the box next to the desired OS, specify the name and click on the button in the form of 3 dots, select the OS image and click Go
Using this program, you can add other components to a flash drive.
When the creation of a multiboot flash drive is completed, you have already prepared the flash drive, it’s time to fill it with programs. How to create a multiboot Windows flash drive with several OS and additional programs.
Perhaps many people have their own collection of images with different versions of Windows. Some even store it on bootloaders DVD discs, which become more and more numerous over time as the number of versions of Windows increases. And now a stack of boot disks is beginning to take up space on the shelves of your desk. But why not make one single flash drive from all these disks, which will contain installations of all the versions of Windows you need. Today I will show you how to do this.
There is one important note. The utility works with only one version of Windows in the image at a time. So if you have a dual ISO that includes both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions, You will not be able to use it. Download single Windows images, for example from this source, and use them.
I will show how to use the utility to upload several installation images from Windows 7/8/10. You can upload other images in the same way.
Take an empty USB large enough to accommodate all the ISOs you want to install, plus leave small quantity additional space. For example, a 16 GB flash drive can hold up to three versions of Windows and one Rescue Disk. If you have a 32 GB USB, then all versions of Windows can be placed on that USB size. And if you also want to add several images with recovery images and rescue disks, you will need a larger flash drive with at least 64 GB.
WinSetupFromUSB is a portable tool that does not need to be installed. After you have downloaded it, extract the archive to a new folder. If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows, then run the executable file with the suffix "64" in the name. If you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, run the file without "x64".
Unpacking WinSetupFromUSB-1-6
If the USB drive was already inserted when the utility was launched, its name will appear at the top of the window. If the USB has not been inserted, plug it in and press the button Refresh.
Run WinSetupFromUSB 1.6
Then check the box Advanced options. At the same time, we will open an additional window in which check the box.
Installing additional options
This option allows you to use custom names for the folders in which Windows ISO images are stored, and custom names in the boot menu that you see when you start your computer from a USB drive. Window Advanced options do not close, otherwise the changes will not be saved.
Now comes the difficult part of the instructions. You need to add all versions of Windows one at a time. When adding an image for the first time, make sure that the Auto format it with FBinst installed. This allows WinSetupFromUSB to format the drive appropriately, suitable for booting all systems. If you know for sure that you will be installing from USB on a computer with UEFI mode, select the option FAT32. Otherwise, you can use the option NTFS.
Auto format it with FBinst
Then select the first Windows ISO image. Check the box next to Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10 /Server 2008/2012 based ISO and then click the browse button ... right. Find in Explorer and open the ISO image you want to add.
Selecting an image with Windows 7
However, if you select a large enough ISO and you are using the FAT32 file system, you may receive a notification that the ISO file is too large and will be split into two parts. It's okay, so press the button OK.
Double check that you have the correct USB selected at the top of the window, and that the correct ISO image is selected. Then click the button GO.
If you are using a large USB drive, you may receive a warning asking you if you are sure you want to use this particular drive. Press the button Yes.
If the Auto format it with FBinst option was enabled (It should be enabled since we are uploading the first image), you will receive a warning that all data on the disk will be erased. Click the button Yes to continue.
WinSetupFromUSB will begin formatting the USB, and after a while will show a pop-up window in which you need to enter a custom folder name for the ISO, with a limit of 1 to 7 characters. If you do not enter anything within 30 seconds, the folder name will be given by default.
Next, a similar window will open in which you need to set a custom string to display in the boot menu. This time, the name can be from 5 to 35 characters. Again, you have 30 seconds to start entering a name, otherwise the system will set it as default.
WinSetupFromUSB will then begin creating folders, adding ISOs to the USB drive, and configuring boot menu options. This may take a few minutes. The progress of work can be assessed in the status bar of the window.
Work progress
After the process of preparing the USB drive is completed, WinSetupFromUSB will display a message about the work being completed. Click the button OK.
At this point, the process of recording the first Windows image can be considered complete. Next, without leaving the program, we continue adding the following ISOs to bootable usb. The adding process is no different from the original one described above with the exception of some points:
- When adding the following ISOs to an existing boot drive, make sure the Auto format it with FBinst not installed. Otherwise, you will have to repeat all the steps from the beginning for the first image.
- Every next time you add images you need to check the box Advanced options to enable the option Custom menu names for Vista/7/8/10/Server Source. Otherwise, all items in the boot menu will look the same.
But this is where I end these instructions. The principle of adding images containing rescue and recovery disks is completely similar. Follow the same steps every time you add a new ISO to your bootable USB drive. You can return to the utility at any time and add something new to the same flash drive. The resulting boot menu does not stand out with its virtuosic design, but has a classic black and white appearance:
The resulting boot menu
Hello friends! Today we’ll talk again about creating a bootable USB flash drive.
How to create a bootable USB device? For what purposes should I use it and what program should I use to record it?
A brief overview of the five most popular and free programs to create a bootable USB flash drive.
Modern developments do not stand still, and yesterday's technologies are slowly but surely losing their relevance. So the once popular CDs and DVDs no longer seem like such a clear solution for storing, transferring and working with information. High data reading speed, versatility and reusability are just a small part of all the advantages of a flash drive as a bootable medium over disks. Today almost everything personal computers and laptops, if they are less than ten years old, support the ability to boot from USB devices. And in some cases (for example, a netbook), a flash drive may be the only boot device from an external drive.
By the way, the new Windows 10 operating system will be the first axis, the distribution of which will be officially distributed on a USB drive. And if you suddenly need to recover files from a flash drive, read about it. I also recommend paying attention to, which will help you take your mind off everyday work and lift your spirits.
With the help of additional software, a flash drive can be used not only as a boot device for installing, reinstalling and restoring the operating system, but also to create an emergency device (Multiboot). This is a kind of resuscitator, a tool from which you can boot at any time and cure your computer of viruses, restore system files or save important data. I described how to create such a flash drive resuscitator in the article “Creating a bootable Live CD/DVD/USB device and its use.” You can read this article.
Despite all the obvious advantages and the growing popularity of a flash drive as a bootable device, there are not so many programs for creating it. Nevertheless, they exist, and today I will introduce you to them in more detail, but first a few words about the preparatory stage.
Preparing a flash drive
We will need the flash drive itself, plus knowledge of some important aspects. First, you need to make sure that your computer supports booting from USB devices. There is a misconception that if in the bios (boot section) there is no option to select boot from usb (there are only floppi, hdd and dvd-rom options), then boot from usb is not supported. This is wrong!
More precisely, this is not always the case. The only correct solution is to refer to the manual (user manual) of your motherboard or using specialized software(as an option - AIDA64) get a detailed report on the hardware used.
The second point is the size of the flash drive. Here everything will depend on what we write on it. For example, to create Live-USB, installation disk For Linux or Windows 7, a 4 GB flash drive is enough. To create a boot device with latest versions For Windows, it is advisable to have a flash drive of at least 8 GB on hand.
The third point is transferring files from a flash drive. Typically, the process of creating a boot device involves full formatting. If there are important files on the flash drive, transfer them to another device in advance. To create a bootable USB flash drive and then use it as a boot device, use the USB-2.0 port (Windows 7 does not support USB 3.0).
How to create a bootable USB flash drive
Let's consider five in various ways using the example of five free programs for Windows.
A small but quite functional utility with the self-explanatory name WinSetupFromUSB. Equally well suited for recording a bootable and/or multiboot flash drive (up to 10 operating systems) and creating Live devices. Official website.
Among the shortcomings is the lack of support for the Russian language. Among the advantages, as I already said, is its versatility. The utility can work not only with Windows distribution, but also suitable for burning an installation disk with Linux.
The usual option for creating a bootable flash drive, for example, with a Windows distribution, involves selecting the flash drive itself, the option to automatically format the media, and the ISO image of the operating system in the appropriate boxes. The recording process starts after pressing the “Go” button. You can read more about how this program works.
To create a multiboot flash drive (several OS), you need to specify the path to the ISO images of the operating systems. Paragraph Windows selection 10 at the time of writing this article is not available by default, but in reality everything is written and works, you just need to select the appropriate column with the available versions - Vista, 7, 8.
2. Rufus
Perhaps the simplest solution for creating bootable USB drives. Everything is simple and intuitive. Suitable for working on systems that do not have an installed OS. Official website rufus.akeo.ie.
The main advantages are speed, simple interface, Russian language. Great solution, if there is a need to create a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive with UEFI support. By the way, I wrote in detail about how to do this in.
Distributed in the format of a regular installer and a portable version. To create a bootable USB flash drive, in the utility window you need to specify the path to the ISO image to be written and click the “Start” button.
On new systems that use UEFI instead of BIOS, set the Partition Scheme and System Interface Type menu to GPT for computers with UEFI.
In other cases, the default settings will be sufficient. The option to format a flash drive is assigned by default.
3. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool
This utility is an official application from Microsoft. The interface is minimalistic, simple and clear, it is easy to work with. Download from the official website wudt.codeplex.com.
Perhaps the name of the utility (Windows 7 USB) will mislead many people into thinking that with its help you can only write the Windows 7 distribution to removable media. However, this is not the case. In addition to the seventh version, Windows 8.1 and 10 distributions can be stored on a flash drive.
The downside is that the utility is not Russified, but the simple and intuitive interface is designed to offset this drawback.
All that is required from the user is to insert a USB drive in advance, select an ISO image with the operating system and specify the path to the media (flash drive) to which this image should be deployed.
The operating principle of this program is based on standard tools operating room Windows systems- this is “diskpart”, “bootsect /nt60”, extracting ISO onto a flash drive. The program acts only as a graphical interface.
UltraISO is one of the best and most functional programs for working with disk images. A universal “harvester” that supports work with almost any known formats. Can work in tandem with Nero Burning Rom and integrates with virtual emulators. It will help if the image boot disk not in ISO format.
The program can convert other image formats into ISO files - NRG, MDF, MDS, IMG, CCD, etc. With UltraISO you can edit ISO files without unpacking them. The UltraISO interface has been translated into many languages, including Russian. For downloading, you are offered several editions of UltraISO, adapted for individual versions of Windows, as well as a portable version of the program. Download link www.ezbsystems.com.
By and large, the program does not care what boot devices will be created with its help, with what operating system, what software and from what manufacturer. The ISO image to be burned must be opened in the program window either using the "Open" command in the "File" menu or using the browse button on the toolbar. This can also be done using the Ctrl + O key combination.
Then in the window that appears, if the program automatically selects the desired flash drive, you should click the “Burn” button.
Daemon Tools Ultra is a professional tool for working with images. The program itself is familiar to many users free version Lite, which allows you to mount virtual drives for reading disk images. Its more functional version - Daemon Tools Ultra - offers, among other features, the creation of boot devices.
Among the disadvantages, it is worth noting that it is paid, but to create a bootable flash drive, you can download a free 20-day trial version on the program’s official website. Official website of the program.
Go to the official website and download the program. During installation, you must select a trial license type.
The program works with a huge number of disk image formats and can be used both to create a boot device with subsequent installation of the operating system, and to restore it (Live disk).
To create a bootable flash drive, in the main window of Daemon Tools Ultra, select the “Tools” menu item, and among its commands - “Burn boot image to USB". Or the hotkey combination Ctrl+B.
In the recording parameters window, specify the path to the image, enable the MBR overwrite option and click “Start”.
When the flash drive is ready, all that remains is to boot from it. The easiest way is to use the boot menu keys. The table below shows a clear example of such keys.
Of course, this is not the entire list of programs designed to create bootable devices, but for the vast majority of users, the capabilities and functionality of the listed software will be sufficient.
For example, the Rufus program can be used as the simplest and fastest tool for creating a bootable USB drive with one Windows distribution or for BIOS firmware from under DOS.
There are now more than a billion computers in the world. Each computer runs on a specific OS, be it a system Linux or system Windows. Many system administrators and advanced users are faced with replacing the OS with a large number of computers. Therefore, each system administrator has several disks at hand and bootable flash drives with different OS.
In this material we will try to simplify the life of a system administrator or an experienced user. We will describe the installation process multiple OS images on one bootable USB flash drive. That is, after reading the article you will be able to do bootable USB flash drive with different operating systems.
The first way to create a multiboot drive
For the first method we will need two utilities RMPrepUSB And Easy2Boot. You can find them on their official websites www.rmprepusb.com and www.easy2boot.com. Immediately after downloading, install the utility RMPrepUSB. To do this, run the installer.
Now click the main button Install, after which the program will install and immediately notify you about this in the final installation window.
Close the installer window and paste USB drive. Then launch the utility from a shortcut on the Desktop.
Before creating a bootable USB flash drive, we will need for an example iso images systems Window 7, Windows 10 And Windows XP. You can make them from licensed disks using utilities Alcohol 120% or CloneCD. If the iso images are ready, you can immediately begin directly preparing the multiboot drive. To do this, check all the radio buttons as shown in the figure and specify the path to the archive with Easy2Boot.
Having placed all the switches correctly, feel free to press the button Prepare disk. The process of writing the necessary data to the drive should begin.
Now let’s go to the USB drive in the “_ISO\WINDOWS” folder and write iso images of our systems to the appropriate folders:
- Windows XP in "_ISO\WINDOWS\XP";
- Window 10 in "_ISO\WINDOWS\WIN10";
- Window 7 in "_ISO\WINDOWS\WIN7".
After the images are written to USB drive, you need to do the last operation by pressing the key combination Ctrl + F2. In a couple of minutes, your multiboot drive will be ready. You can check its performance in the built-in emulator RMPrepUSB. To launch it, press the F11 key. After pressing the button, the emulator will start loading with your drive and after a few minutes you will see the bootloader menu.
As you can see from the example, this method of creating a multiboot USB drive may seem a little complicated. But if you follow the instructions, then after just a few tests of this method it will be very simple for you, like any other. Moreover, with its help you can do boot menu with different pictures. For example, like in the picture below.
You can also find ready-made pictures on the website www.rmprepusb.com.
The second way to create a multiboot drive
For this method we need the utility WinSetupFromUSB. You can download it from the official website www.winsetupfromusb.com. The utility is distributed as a self-extracting archive. Therefore, you just need to download it and unpack it to a place convenient for you. If we compare this method with the previous example, this one will be much simpler and especially suitable for beginners. Before creating, also prepare two OS images of Window 7 and Ubuntu 14. Install the formatted flash drive into your computer and run the utility.
Now select the OS ISO images as shown in the image below.
At this point, all the settings for creating a bootable drive are ready and you can press the GO button, after which the recording of a multiboot USB drive will begin.
If you want the created multiboot USB flash drive to boot into virtual machine, then before pressing the GO button, check the box “ Test in QEMU».
The example shows that any user can handle this application. But in WinSetupFromUSB There are also options for advanced users. To use them, check the box " Advanced options».
If you want to burn another similar operating system onto the media, for example, Windows 7, then do the same operation with the image Windows 7 in the considered example on the same flash drive. After completing these steps when booting from a drive, you will receive two versions of the system Windows 7.
An example of launching a multiboot flash drive in a laptop
For example, we will use the disk we just created using the utility WinSetupFromUSB and laptop Lenovo IdeaPad Z570. In order for our laptop to see the bootable USB flash drive, we need to boot from it. To do this, before booting the laptop, press the F11 key, which will launch the bootable media selection utility.
Select our media and press Enter. This will launch our drive menu.
For example, let's choose to install Ubuntu 14 and press Enter. The installation process will begin Ubuntu 14.
The seven installation process is similar Ubuntu 14.
As you can see, launching the media on a laptop is quite simple and even a novice user can handle it. The process of launching the drive on other laptops and desktop computers may be a little different. You can find out how to load the boot media selection menu in the manual that came with your laptop or motherboard.
Let's sum it up
In our material, we looked at the most popular utilities for creating multiboot drives. In addition to the two programs RMPrepUSB and WinSetupFromUSB, there are also such utilities as:
- SARDU;
- YUMI;
- XBoot.
Each of these utilities has both pros and cons. These utilities are not as popular as RMPrepUSB and WinSetupFromUSB, so we did not include them in the review. If you have a desire, you can always familiarize yourself with them, since there are a lot of materials on the Internet with reviews of these programs. Another advantage of these utilities is the ability to install images boot antiviruses or program images backup. Therefore, using a multiboot flash drive, you can always scan hard drive for viruses and do backups before installing the OS.
I would also like to note that we have described only part of the functionality. RMPrepUSB And WinSetupFromUSB. Therefore, if you want to gain advanced skills in the functionality of these utilities, we recommend visiting their official websites. Here you will find all the necessary manuals that will help you create a multiboot flash drive that meets your requirements.
We hope that this article has helped resolve any issues that have arisen.
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