# Ventoy Universal ISO Boot Utility Discussion Thread



## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

Saw this video and thought Ventoy was a very useful utility that deserves it's own thread here on TPU.









This is the main website that contains info about the utility.





						Ventoy
					

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.




					www.ventoy.net
				




This is the download page which contains executables for both Windows and Linux as well as the source code.








						Releases · ventoy/Ventoy
					

A new bootable USB solution. Contribute to ventoy/Ventoy development by creating an account on GitHub.




					github.com
				




It has support for Legacy, UEFI, MBR, GPT, SecureBoot and other features. What I find very interesting is that it boots Windows XP iso's.

Instructions are simple. Pick a USB drive to use, run the utility and select your intended drive. Then in your file manager drag and drop your iso's into the root of the USB drive. It's important to choose a USB drive with enough space to hold a bunch of iso's. 16GB should be considered the lower limit.


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## Mussels (Aug 26, 2020)

Looks to be a good tool.

Key advice  is if you want to run an older OS (XP, 7) boot from USB 2.0 if you have issues with them not working correctly (lack of USB 3.0 drivers in the OS)


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

Mussels said:


> Key advice  is if you want to run an older OS (XP, 7) boot from USB 2.0 if you have issues with them not working correctly (lack of USB 3.0 drivers in the OS)


This is good advice for iso's that have no native/driver support for USB3.X.

I'm continuing to experiment with this utility as it could prove very useful for my shop. So far it seems like there isn't much in the way of bootable iso's it doesn't support.

For giggles I tried a Windows ME iso. It actually booted. It crashed as it looked for drives to install to, which isn't surprising, but it still booted! I found that very amusing!

So far, most Windows XP, Vista, & 8/8.1, 10 iso's work.
Linux iso's seem to work without fail.
Android iso's also work without flaw.


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## Mussels (Aug 26, 2020)

I love external SSD's for stuff like this


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## windwhirl (Aug 26, 2020)

And bookmarked. During the weekend I'll probably give it a run and see if I can replace Rufus with it.


lexluthermiester said:


> For giggles I tried a Windows ME iso and actually booted and worked



It's not surprising that it worked. The surprising thing is that you have a Windows ME iso  

I mean, if someone needed a Windows OS from those days, I'd think they'd go for 98 or 2000, considering all the bad press surrounding ME...


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> The surprising thing is that you have a Windows ME iso


I offer classic PC system builds through my shop and classic OS installs are common. I have many old OS isos as a result.


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## Mussels (Aug 26, 2020)

those old OS's would be smashingly fast on modern hard drives (not a good idea on SSD's tho)

I like how simple this tool is, that it doesnt require formatting the drive again to update or change an ISO


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> I offer classic PC system builds through my shop and classic OS installs are common. I have many old OS isos as a result.



Always been curious...  where is your shop located anyways?  Feel free to decline to answer and/or PM.  Just wondering.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Always been curious...  where is your shop located anyways?  Feel free to decline to answer and/or PM.  Just wondering.


See PM


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## Kissamies (Aug 26, 2020)

I guess my 16GB drive just got promoted from Win10 install media to a multi-OS install media.


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## bonehead123 (Aug 26, 2020)

Has anyone checked or know anything about the author/developer of this utility ?

Just curious because I am suspicious of new software that seems on the surface to be sooooo simple and easy to use, when in fact alot of it contains/does/installs bad stuff that runs in the background, or phones home to a chinese server without the users consent or knowledge...


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## stinger608 (Aug 26, 2020)

Thanks for starting this thread @lexluthermiester  

I think this will/is a very useful thread on a great tool.


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## P4-630 (Aug 26, 2020)

bonehead123 said:


> or phones home to a chinese server without the users consent or knowledge...



Use Glasswire to check that.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

bonehead123 said:


> when in fact alot of it contains/does/installs bad stuff that runs in the background, or phones home to a chinese server without the users consent or knowledge...


No it doesn't. That's one of the first things I looked for. It doesn't try to touch the internet unless you ask it to(update). Nothing nefarious that I can see so far.


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## bonehead123 (Aug 26, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> No it doesn't. That's one of the first things I looked for. It doesn't try to touch the internet unless you ask it to(update). Nothing nefarious that I can see so far.



Glad to hear this, nice to know that at least 1 thing out there is not bad for us...

I don't have any ME iso's but will still try it out for W10 anyways 

Thanks for the info !


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

Ok, so it's not perfect. Ventoy is having trouble with certain ISO's*(none of them verified tested)*.

I may have spoken too soon about Windows XP as it crashes when it gets to a certain point in the setup process. The fact that it even gets that far is amazing as an XP iso written to a USB drive with Rufus or Etcher will not boot at all. I haven't tested versions of XP which have SATA drivers slipstreamed in yet and that could be the limiting factor. Gandolf's WinPE ISOs are also a problem as I can only seem to get the 32bit versions to fully boot, however none of the included utilities will load with it(it complains about a missing drive "Y" in the logs).

These problems also seem to be system specific as the problems being encountered are different depending on which system I test on. Again, it should be noted that most of the ISO's I'm fiddling about with are not on the "tested" list.

PartedMagic works perfectly as long as you choose one of the "run from RAM" options at boot up.

FreeDOS also works! Just tested it.

Windows 7 installs work perfectly as does Windows 10. Installed several versions of both and the tested systems boot to desktop after installation, no issues.

EDIT:
There also the fact that Ventoy is using exFAT for it's default filesystem. I wonder if that might be playing a factor in the problems being experienced. exFAT is not a universally supported filesystem, but FAT32 is...

EDIT2: 
Windows 8.1 crashes during the setup load. That is just weird as hell. But Windows Vista SP2 works fine...


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## windwhirl (Aug 26, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> exFAT is not a universally supported filesystem, but FAT32 is...


exFAT was optionally supported on Windows XP with KB955704. However, I'm not sure that applies during the Setup process, even if you slipstream the update into the files.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 26, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> exFAT was optionally supported on Windows XP with KB955704. However, I'm not sure that applies during the Setup process, even if you slipstream the update into the files.


That's what I'm thinking. It is entirely possible that if Ventoy used FAT32, XP iso's would work. I mean XP setup is booting from USB!! That in and of itself is something to behold as I've never seen it before without the rigmarole of Easy2Boot(which really isn't all that easy)..

Of course if they used FAT32, iso files would need to fall under the 4GB file size limit, which would be problematic as most modern OS iso's are larger than 4GB. Perhaps including an optional FAT32 version for legacy OS's?


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## windwhirl (Aug 26, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's what I'm thinking. It is entirely possible that if Ventoy used FAT32, XP iso's would work. I mean XP setup is booting from USB!! That in and of itself is something to behold as I've never seen it before without the rigmarole of Easy2Boot(which really isn't all that easy)..



Booting XP from USB's been possible for quite a while now, though (I think I used WinNTSetup or something else that came in Hiren's Boot CD or something like that). Though definitely I slipstreamed the SATA drivers (which never truly enabled AHCI, just IDE mode, although that may have been just me clicking the wrong checkbox or something) and some updates too with nLite... Although that was almost a decade ago lol, so that toolset could probably be replaced for something far better.

Regarding the update for exFAT, it seems Microsoft nuked it from their servers. A search on DDG shows a lot of posts of people looking for the update and not finding it...

On top of that, being an optional update, it was probably never offered on WSUS, since I don't have it in my WSUS offline update files (Yes, I still possess update files as far back as Windows 2000, sue me  )


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 27, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> Booting XP from USB's been possible for quite a while now, though (I think I used WinNTSetup or something else that came in Hiren's Boot CD or something like that). Though definitely I slipstreamed the SATA drivers (which never truly enabled AHCI, just IDE mode, although that may have been just me clicking the wrong checkbox or something) and some updates too with nLite... Although that was almost a decade ago lol, so that toolset could probably be replaced for something far better.


I was talking about setup iso's not WinPE images. Setup iso's only seem to work with Easy2Boot. Never understood why.


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## sepheronx (Aug 27, 2020)

Thank you for the find!  Will experiment with this later.


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## Mussels (Aug 28, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's what I'm thinking. It is entirely possible that if Ventoy used FAT32, XP iso's would work. I mean XP setup is booting from USB!! That in and of itself is something to behold as I've never seen it before without the rigmarole of Easy2Boot(which really isn't all that easy)..
> 
> Of course if they used FAT32, iso files would need to fall under the 4GB file size limit, which would be problematic as most modern OS iso's are larger than 4GB. Perhaps including an optional FAT32 version for legacy OS's?


you can format the parition with the ISO's to whatever you want, go test it with FAT32


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2020)

Mussels said:


> you can format the parition with the ISO's to whatever you want, go test it with FAT32


Had not thought about that, trying now..


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## newtekie1 (Aug 28, 2020)

Interesting, I'll have to play around with this later when I get some time.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2020)

Mussels said:


> you can format the parition with the ISO's to whatever you want, go test it with FAT32


Ok, formatting FAT32 to the main storage partition worked fine and improved compatibility with a Win7PE EBD, but Hirens Boot CD WinXP-PE still crashed, but with a different error. Video related instead of drive related. WinXP setup iso's still fail with the same error.

I also tried NTFS on a different USB drive and it worked flawlessly.


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## sam_86314 (Aug 29, 2020)

Looks like a neat tool.

Currently trying to use it with my customized Windows 10 installers. I need to do more testing, but it looks like it doesn't play well with installers that have an install.esd file rather than an install.wim file.

EDIT: Swapped out my ESD-based installer for a WIM-based one and it worked just fine.


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## OneMoar (Aug 29, 2020)

can this be used to boot a windows 10 installer in both pure UEFI AND MBR ?
or do you need to reform the media like rufus


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## sam_86314 (Aug 29, 2020)

OneMoar said:


> can this be used to boot a windows 10 installer in both pure UEFI AND MBR ?
> or do you need to reform the media like rufus


Looks like it can, but your mileage may vary.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 29, 2020)

OneMoar said:


> can this be used to boot a windows 10 installer in both pure UEFI AND MBR ?


Yes. This utility supports both Legacy & UEFI as well as MBR & GPT.


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## sam_86314 (Aug 31, 2020)

Been using this tool a lot while messing with the netbook I got recently.

Android X86, Windows 7 and 10, System Rescue CD, and Debian all work perfectly.


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## buzzi (Aug 31, 2020)

Wow! This is by far better than Easy2boot and multisystem, it works exactly how a multi ISO usb should, just place ISOs without rebuilding its bootloader or defragmenting the drive each time.
So far no problems with 2 linux distros on EXT4 partition, thank you lexluthermiester.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 31, 2020)

buzzi said:


> Wow! This is by far better than Easy2boot


Careful, I have yet to get an XP iso to fully work. Depending on the iso, it get part way through setup and then either freezes or crashes. It still progress from trying to boot an iso written straight to a USB drive though..


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## 4YouNoOne (Aug 31, 2020)

Good Util, I tried to inject exFat drivers and it worked.

I used this file https://www.kandev.com/files/WinXP/exfat driver for Windows XP/WindowsXP-KB955704-x86-ENU.exe


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## buzzi (Sep 1, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Careful, I have yet to get an XP iso to fully work. Depending on the iso, it get part way through setup and then either freezes or crashes. It still progress from trying to boot an iso written straight to a USB drive though..


Do they work when used with other tools? Have you tried a (custom) xp ISO made for example with nlite?


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 1, 2020)

buzzi said:


> Do they work when used with other tools?


Not that I have seen yet. But I'm still playing around with Ventoy to see if there is a way to make XP work.


buzzi said:


> Have you tried a (custom) xp ISO made for example with nlite?


Yes, I've tried virgin(unaltered) iso's, custom iso's and WinPE based iso's and none work. XP crashes regardless. I've tried several different systems as well with the same results. Kinda disappointing really, but then again XP is not the goal of the Ventoy project specifically. It would be nice if they worked it in though.


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## buzzi (Sep 2, 2020)

What about other tools (e.g. unetbootin, easytoboot, rufus , sardu etc)?


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 2, 2020)

buzzi said:


> What about other tools (e.g. unetbootin, easytoboot, rufus , sardu etc)?


You mean about XP or 9X? Easy2Boot works for both I believe. Rufus does not. I haven't used UnetBootin enough to know for sure. Never heard of Sardu.


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## buzzi (Sep 2, 2020)

Let us know!


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## SteveSi (Sep 13, 2020)

Easy2Boot version 2 supports direct booting from MBR and now due to addition of grub2 agFM on the 2nd FAT32 partition, also UEFI32, UEFI64 and Secure Boot UEFI64 (it then disables Secure Boot so you can boot non-secure ISOs too). Just copy the ISOs, Windows VHDs, .IMG files, .EFI files to the first NTFS partition. Not all files need to be contiguous.
agFM also allows you to switch-in/out the E2B .imgPTN files if you need them (but since UEFI-booting to ISOs is now supported, you won't need them so much).
You can also add Ventoy to the 2nd FAT32 partition so you have more options (Easy2Boot/agFM/Ventoy for MBR, or agFM/Ventoy for UEFI64+Secure Boot, or agFM for UEFI32).


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## OneMoar (Oct 19, 2020)

doesn't boot my custom winxpe build for some reason


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 20, 2020)

OneMoar said:


> doesn't boot my custom winxpe build for some reason


Yeah, Windows XP has turned out to be problematic with Ventoy.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 20, 2020)

Didn't @Solaris17 have something similar one time?


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## OneMoar (Oct 20, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Yeah, Windows XP has turned out to be problematic with Ventoy.


win10xpe* I contacted the dev I can get it to boot in compatablity mode but ventoy apperently does not allow re-mounting the iso after boot
I have a work around ill post later I am still going over it with him in the issue tracker


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## Solaris17 (Oct 20, 2020)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Didn't @Solaris17 have something similar one time?



A million years ago.

I do this now.









						Guide: Making a better diag drive
					

Hi everyone! Cranked a redbull and some coffee and with end of the year projects coming to a close for me or progress waiting on co-op from other departments I thought it was high time to cover this in a tech forum. As some of you know I work in the IT industry. On the other side I am still on...




					www.techpowerup.com


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## OneMoar (Oct 20, 2020)

Solaris17 said:


> A million years ago.
> 
> I do this now.
> 
> ...


thats still the Hardaway just download windows 10 xpe and tick what things you want included and slap  the build it button 

that being said if somebody wants to make sense of this horrible translation be my guest





						Ventoy
					

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.




					www.ventoy.net
				




basically what needs to happen is that win10xpe expects the root of the iso to be mounted under y: after boot and thats not happening

I can't make heads or tails of the engrish in that post to see how to make ventoy do that

for now I just moved the programs folder,cdusb.y the root of the drive with the iso

x10pe looks for the cdusb.y and if it finds it it mounts that directory as y xpe also expects there to be Only One copy of the cdusb.y having two causes breakage so after initial build you need to Goto the iso prebuild folder and cut the programs and cdusb.y file and move it to the root of the drive BEFORE clicking the rebuild iso button

I had to comment out the functionality the creates the cdusb.y in the core win10xpescript to make it build the iso without it so it could be manually placed in the root of the drive
this has to be done after the initial build of the iso but before the final build where you remove the programs folder from the iso target
its been my experience that some ISO tools have problems dealing with xpe iso's and mounting and editing them creates problems (YMMV)

I accually prefer this method as most of the utility's I opted to roll in run just fine without being installed this leaves them accessible on the root of the pen drive

ill just drop this here since I was uploading it anyway





						ventoy-bobssuperboot.rar
					






					drive.google.com
				



windows 10 pe 2004 with a bunch of random stuff added 

installation instructions
1. install ventoy to your drive of choice https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
2. extract .rar onto drive
2. you may add any other isos you wish to boot to the \ISO's folder
3. if you need a specific program added to the boot-disk pm me with a link to it. it needs to be portable and run under winpe

3. read the dam readme file


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