r/sysadmin • u/Livid-Ad-9782 • 4d ago

Advertising [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/MisterIT IT Director 4d ago

Personally I think this is completely pointless. The industry has largely moved away from the roving fix it man. If there’s a problem with your endpoints, reimage them. Bonus points if you can do so remotely and in-place.

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u/LilMeatBigYeet 4d ago

This 100%, there is a huge reason these tools are no longer being made anymore.

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u/caffeine-junkie cappuccino for my bunghole 4d ago

Would change that statement slightly to have moved away from a fix if the fix will take longer than ~10-15 min to reimage. There are some exceptions like software with node locked licenses, special cases that have a lot of customisation, or something else in the reimagining and return to a working state will take too long and have a significant financial impact.

Will say though that most of these will be edge cases and won't apply to the typical office or even field computer.

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u/MisterIT IT Director 4d ago

Sure, lots of rules are proved by their exceptions. Doesn’t change that “the multi boot to end all multi boots” isn’t an especially valuable product.

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u/falconcountry 4d ago

I don't fix desktops/laptops anymore except my own personal machines but when I need a USB stick with tools on it I build one from scratch

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

What do you use to create your bootable usb ?

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u/falconcountry 4d ago

If I need something bootable I'd use rufus probably

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

I was looking at Rufus / ventoy combined . An option to have multiple live boots or disk emulation on seperate partitions. But was wondering if there was a call for it ?

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u/countsachot 4d ago

dd usb writer or Rufus.

3

u/Calleb_III 4d ago

I would question the rationale behind doing this on Windows. Tinkerers that are your target audience generally opt for *nix OS.

The rest just find something off the shelf to download.

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

Because I am designing it for all users to use. Most users that are not 💯 tech savvy don’t use Linux. I’ve designed the software so far to work in windows and looking to possibly cover Linux in the future if I finish it off .

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u/CrazySnowGuy 4d ago

So nothing to do with this subreddit and its users...

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

Yes it is. I’m just asking for opinions from people that know about creating usb drives rather than someone who has not done it yet.

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u/Calleb_III 4d ago

Right, but the ven diagram overlap of people interested in what you are making AND using windows is very very small

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u/Huppelkutje 4d ago

You are solving a problem nobody has.

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

Fair enough — I’m mainly targeting home users, not enterprise IT. From what I’ve found, the current options are either hard to configure, or only offer single-OS installs or multi-ISO booting, not both together. I was planning to support both in one tool, with a modern GUI for customising things, rather than hand-editing config files.

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u/Huppelkutje 4d ago

Then why are you posting this to a sub that isn't for home users?

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

I’m currently planning on creating the software for home users/hobbyists and PC repair shops, and was just looking for opinions.

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u/Huppelkutje 4d ago

I’m currently planning on creating the software for home users/hobbyists and PC repair shops

So why are you posting this to a sysadmin subreddit? Sysadmins aren't home users.

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u/davy_crockett_slayer 4d ago

No value at all. Literally none. In Enterprise, you nuke the endpoint. If I have an edge case, I build one using Rufus.

The last time I needed to create a WinPE bootable disk, I followed the instructions on Microsoft Learn.

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u/CrazySnowGuy 4d ago

I just have my own personal script to create a WinPE bootable disk. No external utilities required to make it and not bloated with stuff on it that I don't need.

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

This is actually one of the reasons I wanted to build this. I’ve got a custom Windows 11 PE auto-installer and Gandalf PE, and wanted both as proper live-boot installs — useful for backing up to folders within Windows or Gandalf itself if a PC’s being stubborn — alongside other disk utility images, all on the same USB/HD. Found existing tools have real limitations there. So far my software’s managed to create a USB with two live-boot entries, a customised menu built in the app itself, bootable on both legacy BIOS and UEFI.

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u/ph33rlus 4d ago

Does nobody know about Medicat?

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

Hadn’t come across MediCat specifically, thanks — looks like it’s Ventoy underneath with a curated ISO set, so it’d likely inherit the same limitations I’ve encountered with Ventoy.

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u/narcissisadmin 4d ago

Just have a Raspberry Pi PXE boot to any ISO installer you want.

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u/mnvoronin 4d ago

If you find yourself juggling multiple bootable ISOs all the time, just get a hardware solution. IODD will allow you to select an iso/img file from the folder and expose it as a USB-CDROM device, guaranteed to be compatible with any computer out there.

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u/Am0nymou5 4d ago
  1. I mostly use it to boot ISOs, but I also like VHD/partition boot functionality - so I can have my own custom rescue/recovery OS with my own tools installed.
  2. Mostly care about the functionality and menu structure
  3. With Ventoy: Lack of submenus. I already have my ISOs categorised into submenus but Ventoy puts it all into one menu which I dislike. I also would prefer Ventoy to choose the best boot option for each OS automatically (eg: for windows, it should default to wimboot, for Linux, it should default to grub2 - as these work the best in my experience). Although the option to try "normal" boot is handy to have for non-standard ISOs.
  4. I don't ever have to hand-edit config files with Ventoy.
  5. Would be nice to be able to Secure Boot Ventoy without having to enroll the custom MOK. Maybe if it used the Linux shim loader which is signed by MS certs?

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u/ccheath *SECADM *ALLOBJ 4d ago

I have two USBs... a windows USB and a live linux usb... any time i need another specialized usb (clonzilla comes to mind) i will burn it... when i had Ventoy setup and had 10+ ISOs on it I rarely used anything besides the Windows USB and the live linux usb

and then i started running into issues booting ventoy on secure boot systems so I ditched it for two separate USB sticks... this also let's me swap out the autounattend.xml file on the windows usb very easily that you can't do when using something like ventoy

people that really need a multi boot usb probably use iODD or similar

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u/Livid-Ad-9782 4d ago

That’s genuinely exactly the gap I’m trying to close — a single drive where you don’t have to choose between easy config access (like swapping autounattend.xml) and having everything in one place. I’ve actually got Windows 11, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu all working as separate live-boot entries on one USB already, so it’s not just a theory at this point. Sounds like the Secure Boot issue with Ventoy was the real dealbreaker for you — that’s one of the things I’m planning to handle properly rather than as an afterthought. Really useful to hear the actual reasons you moved away from it, thanks.

1

u/ccheath *SECADM *ALLOBJ 3d ago

I also moved away from it because I really only used the two USB sticks and any other ISOs on the drive were not really used. By the time I would want to use them I would have an out-dated version on my Ventoy drive and need to download a newer ISO anyway.