AIO Boot NewGen – A lightweight version with a new design

AIO Boot has had a 2-year period for an update and is no longer in development, and here is NewGen, a lightweight version with a new design. NewGen is just a name, its main purpose is to remove items that are outdated in the previous version, providing a better experience in its functionality.

• Features
• Grub2
  • Settings
  • Secure Boot
  • Custom configfile
• Install
• AutoPartition
• Add ISO
• Windows VHD
• Download
• Changelog

This version is published soon on the occasion of the Lunar New Year 2023, wish everyone a very happy new year.

Features

Main features of the tool:

• Supports installation on both USB and fixed and external hard drives.
• USB: Quickly create a disk in GPT or MBR style.
• USB: Supports fresh installs and updates to hidden FAT32 partitions.
• Add ISOs to another drive.

Grub2 Settings:

• Supports booting on systems with Secure Boot enabled (x64 only).
• Supports setting default entry and Timeout helps to automatically boot into selected entry.
• Supports enabling and disabling ByPass options for Windows 11 installations.

Grub2

NewGen uses Grub 2.06 as the default bootloader. In the future, other loaders will be added by dragging and dropping files.

Supports booting in both Legacy BIOS and UEFI modes. For UEFI mode, only x86_64 and i386 CPUs are supported, arm64 can boot but features are not implemented as I don’t have such a machine.

Shortcuts will be generated automatically, just press the shortcut for quick access to the corresponding entry.

Background and text color (16 colors) can be customized through the tool (Tools -> Grub2 Background and Color).

Settings

• Set default entry: choose a default entry, quickly select a favorite entry when the menu starts to appear without having to press the up and down key to select. Also supports subentry.
• Timeout: this item sets the countdown time, press any key to cancel the countdown. The purpose of this option is to boot into the default entry you selected earlier.
• Windows 11 Bypass Options: BypassSecureBootCheck, BypassTPMCheck and AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU options can be enabled or disabled from this entry, default: No.

Secure Boot

The file shimx64.efi is taken from Ubuntu signed with Microsoft key, it allows to boot with Secure Boot option enabled or disabled. But my grubx64.efi file uses self-signed key, you need to enroll my certificate through Mok Manager.

Here are some known error messages, I will not suggest that you should disable Secure Boot but here there will be no other way.

Bootloader has not verified loaded image. System is compromised. Halting.
error: Secure Boot forbids loading module from ...
bad shim signature. You need to load the kernel first.

All GRUB modules not stored in the core.img, OS kernels, ACPI tables, Device Trees, etc. have to be signed, e.g, using PGP. Additionally, the commands that can be used to subvert the UEFI secure boot mechanism, such as iorw and memrw will not be available when the UEFI secure boot is enabled. This is done for security reasons and are enforced by the GRUB Lockdown mechanism.

GNU GRUB Manual

Custom configfile

If you want to add something to the Grub2 script, create a new file at /AIO/Menu/custom.cfg then add the custom code in this file. Because original files will be overwritten during Reinstall or update to new version.

Here is an example code that can boot a WinPE ISO file:

menuentry "Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 10" {
	Map_and_Boot /Diagnostics_and_Recovery_Toolset_10.iso
}

Important: Grub2 File Manager is recommended to support booting ISOs. Just download the .7z file and drag and drop it into the tool to add an entry for it.

Install

NewGen requires at least 2 drives on your device. One drive in NTFS or exFAT format to store data and ISO files, one in FAT32 format to support UEFI booting. Because it is designed for portable use, all the drives mentioned must be on the same disk.

Run AIO_Boot_NewGen_Setup.exe, in the Install tab there will be the following options:

• NTFS/exFAT Drive: select a drive in either of these formats for installation. The file size is getting bigger day by day, so these two formats are required to store files larger than 4GB in size.
• FAT32 Drive: This drive is used to store the EFI folder for UEFI boot. If it doesn’t need to store any other data, this drive only requires twice the size of the EFI folder.
  For USB, since Windows 10 build 15063, you should mount the drive for the FAT32 partition so that the tool skips some tasks. But if this partition is not mounted, the tool can still recognize it to install and update files.
• Don’t overwrite the current bootloader: if this is checked, Grub2 will not be installed as the default bootloader. The purpose of this option is to boot Grub2 from another bootloader, the files to be installed: /AIO/grub/i386-pc/core.img for Legacy BIOS boot and the .efi files in the directory /EFI/aioboot entry for UEFI boot.

After selecting the correct drives, click the Install button to install NewGen.

How to update to the new version?

Just install a newer version like how you installed the previous version, the files created during your use will not be deleted and thus no data will be lost. But you need to select the correct drives of the current version.

AutoPartition

If you don’t know how to create the required partitions, or you’re using an Windows OS older than Windows 10 build 15063, this tab might help. This feature only supports USB.

Please close all windows that are reading or writing to the drives on the device first (File Explorer, Disk Management)…

• According to many users, I recommend using MBR.
• FAT32 Size: default is 100 MB. If you want a FAT32 partition with a different size, reduce the size of the NTFS partition and then create a new FAT32 partition.

Click the Create button to start creating, after creating, you can install NewGen in the Install tab. By default the first partition will be formatted to NTFS, you can format it to exFAT before installation.

GPT partition table structure: GPT style will have an additional 1MB partition marked as the BIOS boot partition, which is required to install Grub2 i386-pc for Legacy BIOS booting.

Add ISO

Run AIO_Boot_NewGen.cmd to add the ISO/7z files it supports. Supported ISO files and 7z files are listed in the Download menu.

• Unlike AIO Boot, NewGen has a new design, can add multiple ISO/7z files at once by Drag and Drop. It will detect files without selecting the type.
• Windows, WinPE and Ubuntu ISO files are extracted completely.
• WinPE & Setup: the boot.wim file will be modified and repackaged during Add.

Add To: select another drive present on the current disk.

• Useful if the ISO file you want to add doesn’t support the current drive’s format. Or the capacity of the current drive is not enough.
• Ubuntu Live does not support mounting the exFAT format, so use NTFS or FAT32.
• Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation does not support Persistence Mode on NTFS partitions. Just create a new partition in FAT32 format and Add the ISO to the drive of this partition to use Persistence Mode if desired.

The Mount All/Unmount All button to the right of the list helps to quickly mount or unmount all the partitions on the current disk.

• This button is useful if you want to install Clover, rEFInd and Grub4dos on the ESP partition, just Mount then you will see the drives in the drop-down list.
• First click will be Mount All, second click will Unmount All.
• On the GPT disk, we don’t have access to the drive of the ESP partition using Explorer. The way to access it is to run Command Prompt with Administrator privileges. Or open Notepad with Administrator rights, then select File -> Open to open the Explorer dialog box and perform operations here.

Persistence mode:

• The data used in the current session will not be lost when shutdown, but will be saved for use in the next session.
• Do not do things that lead to the system having to reconfigure or update the Kernel. For example, sudo apt upgrade or sudo yum update commands, it is advisable to check first which packages will be updated. Also do not configure or change the driver.
• The persistence file is extracted to the directory from which the ISO was extracted (/AIO/Linux(Android)/isofilename): persistence (Debian), writable (Ubuntu) and data.img (Android-x86, Fedora). You can change the file size easily with resize2fs command.

WinPE & Setup:

• The ISO file is extracted to the directory /AIO/WinPE/isofilename.
• Autounattend.xml: The tool will detect this file in the extracted folder, it will copy this file to the system drive when WinPE is started for it to take effect.
• Because it is extracted, programs have permission to write its data on the mounted drive.
• The tool will patch the boot.wim file only once while adding the ISO without having to patch it every time it boots.
• Premium WinPE versions containing cracked programs will never be added. Comments related to these files will not be approved.

Linux:

• Why extract an ISO file when booting from an ISO file is supported? Because of compatibility, some systems get stuck during boot up, others get stuck during shutdown or reboot. Many times I had to press the power button to force it to shutdown.
• The tool is not able to recognize which distribution the ISO file belongs to exactly. So there is a high chance that some incorrect options will be provided. For example Kali Linux is based on Debian but it does not support Persistence Mode from the persistence file.

Debian Live:

• Supports Persistence mode on both NTFS and FAT32.
• For Debian Live and Kali Linux, if you want to install it to your hard drive, boot from the ISO file, then choose to boot into Live mode and run Installer from the desktop. The integration only supports Live mode.

Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation:

• Supports Persistence mode if added to FAT32 drive.
• For Ubuntu, the Preseed file is usually included in the ISO at the path preseed/ubuntu.seed. This file is also extracted to the /AIO/Linux/isofilename directory.
• You can also install Ubuntu on USB using WubiUEFI to boot and use on many different machines.

Windows VHD

The WinVHD tab helps to quickly create a VHD file and apply an edition in the Windows ISO file or WIM file to this VHD file.

By installing Windows into a VHD file, we do not need to create actual partitions on the disk, easily deploying, moving and removing the operating system as a file.

NewGen uses WimLib to Apply image in a WIM file to a VHD file.

Steps:

1. Select the Windows installer ISO file, or open the ISO file, then select sources\install.wim or sources\install.esd. If the ISO file is selected, the tool will help select one of these files. In case you are using Windows 7, or the ISO file contains both x64 and x86 architectures, mount the ISO file and choose directly to the WIM/ESD file.
2. Save VHD file to: only fixed NTFS drives are supported, not removable drives, USB…
3. Size:
   • Specify the maximum allotable size for the VHD file, 20 GB minimum.
   • The size is dynamically allocated, which means that the file size will increase with the size contained in the file until it reaches the maximum size.
4. Boot Mode: This option holds a place for future features.
5. Click the Create button to start creating.

Boot Sequence: Tools -> Windows Boot Manager -> Add a VHD file to the Boot Sequence.

From the BCDEdit /bootsequence description, I have added an option to boot to the VHD file on the next boot of Windows Boot Manager without having to show the entry every time it boots.

• After creating the VHD file, we should add it to the one-time boot sequence to start the Installation process.
• Once booted, the item in the list will be automatically deleted so we need to add it again to continue the Installation. Windows installation usually takes at least 2 boot times.
• Once the installation is complete, you can boot into the VHD file from the File Manager in Grub2.

Download

Before running the tool, you agree that unforeseen risks may occur. That can lead to data loss and anything else.

The file is packaged on a Windows 10 environment with Windows Security enabled. If your Anti-Virus detects any threats, I think this is just a mistake.

Changelog

• 23.03.23:
  • Network Boot (for testing):
    • The tool does not currently support adding entries for you, but the configuration file and iPXE commands are available for use.
    • HTTP server:
      • Runs on port 8082.
      • http://IP:8082 is the server address.
      • It is recommended to use HTTP to download files instead of TFTP.
      • For iPXE commands and in the configuration file, the HTTP server address will be http://${next-server}:8082.
    • Update iPXE files: iPXE binaries are not included in the Setup.exe file. Use this button to download or update files from FOGProject.
    • The configuration file for the test is located in the path: \AIO\PXE\iPXE\menutest.ipxe.
  • Setup.exe: Added Simplified Chinese translation. Thanks a1ive.
  • Updated Turkish translation. Thanks Tayfun Akkoyun.
  • Checks and exits if the application is run multiple times at the same time.
• 23.03.19:
  • New tab: Network Boot (for testing).
  • This tool no longer detects the ISO file of Sergei Strelec.
• 23.03.10:
  • New: Grub2 -> Settings -> Linux Persistent Partition Mode (Ubuntu & Debian).
  • Parted Magic: Directly boot the ISO file from File Manager or Drag and drop to extract the ISO file through the tool.
  • Fix: Check for Updates.
  • Updated Turkish translation. Thanks Tayfun Akkoyun.
• 23.03.09:
  • Setup.exe
    • AutoPartition: add a check box to make sure you understand this will lose all data on the selected USB.
    • Add Export files to language list. The files will be exported to the AIO_Boot_NewGen_Setup folder, edit these files to change the translations.
  • Tools -> Check for Updates.
    • The tool uses the GET method to download the contents of a static file containing the latest version information. It will then compare with the currently installed version. So no data is sent and processed by the server, except for the minimum information needed for communication (IP, protocol, User-Agent…).
    • No direct link is provided for direct download because of limited server resources.
  • Tools -> Settings. Here you can choose to have the tool automatically check for updates at startup without having to manually check for updates.
  • CentOS 7 Live, CentOS Stream 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (FAT32), VMware vSphere Hypervisor, HDClone (UEFI).
• 23.03.05: New: Tools -> Remove ISO or Rename Entry
  • Please do not open BCD files with other programs while this tool is running.
  • Not supported on main menu entries.
  • For ISOs added to another partition, please mount the drive for that partition.
• 23.03.03: Setup.exe:
  • Fix functions not working on Windows 7.
  • If you don’t use this tool on Windows 7 there is no need to update.
• 23.03.02:
  • Setup.exe:
    • Do not use ESP partition.
    • Remove: Help me choose.
    • Remove: Mark FAT32 is ESP/Active Partition.
  • Windows Setup: Fix the error “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one. (0x80300024)”.
  • Add Turkish language. Thanks Tayfun Akkoyun.
• 23.02.24:
  • AutoPartition:
    • Added “Help me choose” option. The disk style will be GPT if the system is booted in UEFI mode and MBR if the system is booted in Legacy BIOS mode.
    • Disable FAT32 Size option, default is 100 MB. If you want a FAT32 partition with a different size, reduce the size of the NTFS partition and then create a new FAT32 partition.
  • File Manager: Added support for booting Ubuntu, Debian, Kali Linux from ISO.
  • Persistence Mode:
    • Added 16GB.
    • Automatically close the window after 10 seconds if no interaction on the list.
  • NewGen.exe:
    • Mount all: mount only partitions whose format is known by the tool. FAT32, NTFS and exFAT are known formats.
    • Debian Live: Supports Persistence mode on both NTFS and FAT32.
    • Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation: Supports Persistence mode if added to FAT32 drive.
    • Kali Linux.
  • For Debian Live and Kali Linux, if you want to install it to your hard drive, boot from the ISO file, then choose to boot into Live mode and run Installer from the desktop. The integration only supports Live mode.
• 23.02.20:
  • Add Android-x86, Bliss OS, Remix OS and Phoenix OS.
    • Bliss OS shows a striped screen on my machine, glad if someone says it shows properly.
    • Persistence Mode: 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB or Don’t use. The tool will extract a highly compressed data.img file, please be patient.
  • Add Mount All/Unmount All button to the right of the drop-down list in the Add ISO tab.
    • This button will mount or unmount all unmounted partitions on the disk (except the current drive).
    • For GPT, a 1 MB partition is mounted and requires Format, ignore this dialog.
  • Rearrange the items in the Download menu.
• 23.02.15:
  • Add ISO: supports canceling processes in progress and in queues.
  • Grub4dos for UEFI, the same way to add Clover and rEFInd. The way to add is in the changelog in the previous version.
  • EFI/Active Partition: don’t mount partitions on other disks.
• 23.02.13:
  • Setup.exe:
    • New: Mark FAT32 as ESP/Active Partition
      • This is just an information, cannot be unchecked.
      • For MBR, the FAT32 partition selected in the list will be marked as Active.
      • For GPT, the FAT32 partition selected in the list will be marked as ESP (EFI System Partition).
    • Show all FAT32 drives/partitions in the list. Previous versions only show the one it found first.
  • New: Tools -> ESP/Active Partitions
    • Mount All: this will mount the drive for all ESP/Active partitions it finds. For USB, no more than one partition is visible on versions of Windows prior to Windows 10 build 15063.
    • Unmount All: This item unmounts.
    • Explorer Dialog: this dialog helps to access, edit, add and delete files in the ESP partition.
  • rEFInd Boot Manager và Clover Bootloader:
    • First, we need to mount the drive for the FAT32 partition, then from the Add ISO tab, select the FAT32 drive in the [Add To] section. If you do not know how to mount the drive for the FAT32 partition, use the Mount All function mentioned above.
    • The download link is listed in the Download menu.
    • Clover supports both EFI and Legacy. Supported extensions: .iso.7z.
    • rEFInd only supports EFI. Supported filename: refind-bin-x.xx.x.x.zip.
• 23.02.10: Grub2 Background and Color: Removed unsupported colors, the list now includes only 16 colors.
• 23.02.09:
  • New: Tools -> Grub2 Background and Color:
    • The background image should be 1024×768.
    • Click any blank area of the window to select a Background image.
    • Click on the texts to choose a color for them.
    • For a Highlighted entry, click in an empty area on the line to choose a background color.
    • Only 16 colors are supported in the [Custom colors] section, do not choose colors other than these.
    • The colors displayed on the program are not the same as Grub2.
  • Setup.exe: Fix failed to install if both partitions are mounted.
• 23.02.07:
  • NewGen.exe: New 64-bit version, running AIO_Boot_NewGen.cmd will automatically run the appropriate 32-bit or 64-bit version.
  • WinVHD tab & High DPI Settings (System, System (Enhanced)): fix display of elements.
  • Many bug fixes.
• 23.02.05:
  • WinVHD tab.
  • Boot Sequence:
    • Tools -> Windows Boot Manager -> Add a VHD file to the Boot Sequence.
    • Select a VHD file to boot on next boot.
    • The VHD file will be booted by the current system’s Windows Boot Manager, not Grub2.
• 23.01.31:
  • Accepts drag and drop WIM files.
  • Uses the wimlib to modify WIM files, which is faster, does not require mounting to a directory.
• 23.01.27:
  • AutoPartition: format to NTFS instead of exFAT.
  • WinPE & Setup:
    • All entries will be stored in a single BCD file.
    • Repackages the boot.wim file.
    • Supports ISO files created from Win10XPE.
    • Autounattend.xml: The ISO files will be extracted to the \AIO\WinPE\xxxxx folder. Just copy the XML file into these folders for it to take effect.
• 23.01.22: WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec both Russian and English versions.
• 23.01.19:
  • DLC Boot 2022:
    • Only .RAR files downloaded from the official website are supported.
    • WinPE XP does not run on exFAT formatted drives.
  • Fix #475867.
• 23.01.16: Initial release version.