Ventoy Universal ISO Boot Utility Discussion Thread

[lexluthermiester]

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.

 

[Mussels]

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)

 

[lexluthermiester]

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.

 

[Mussels]

I love external SSD's for stuff like this

 

[windwhirl]

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

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...

 

[lexluthermiester]

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.

 

[Mussels]

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

 

[R-T-B]

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.

 

[lexluthermiester]

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

See PM

 

[Ruru]

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

 

[bonehead123]

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...

 

[stinger608]

Thanks for starting this thread @lexluthermiester

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

 

[P4-630]

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

Use Glasswire to check that.

 

[lexluthermiester]

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.

 

[bonehead123]

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 !

 

[lexluthermiester]

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...

 

[windwhirl]

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.

 

[lexluthermiester]

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?

 

[windwhirl]

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 )

 

[lexluthermiester]

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.

 

[sepheronx]

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

 

[Mussels]

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

 

[lexluthermiester]

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..

 

[newtekie1]

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

 

[lexluthermiester]

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.