YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator (Windows)

YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer), is the successor to MultibootISOs. It can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more. Contrary to MultiBootISO's which used grub to boot ISO files directly from USB, YUMI uses syslinux to boot extracted distributions stored on the USB device, and reverts to using grub to Boot Multiple ISO files from USB, if necessary.

Aside from a few distributions, all files are stored within the Multiboot folder, making for a nicely organized Multiboot Drive that can still be used for other storage purposes.

Creating a YUMI Multiboot MultiSystem USB Flash Drive
YUMI works much like Universal USB Installer, except it can be used to install more than one distribution to run from your USB. Distributions can also be uninstalled using the same tool!

YUMI - Multiboot USB Creator

YUMI's Main Multiboot Boot Menu

YUMI - Multiboot Boot Menu

YUMI-0.0.4.4.exe – February 8, 2012 – Changelog

Added F-Secure Rescue CD, Fuduntu, Slacko Puppy, HP SmartStart, HP Firmware Maintenance, and HP Automatic Firmware Update entries. Thanks Andy Campos for providing the HP Tool Entries!

How to Create a MultiBoot USB Flash Drive

  1. Run* YUMI-0.0.4.4.exe following the onscreen instructions
  2. Run the tool again to Add More ISOs/Distributions to your Drive
  3. Restart your PC setting it to boot from the USB device
  4. Select a distribution to Boot from the Menu and enjoy!

That's all there is to it. You should now be booting your favorite distributions from your custom Multi-Boot USB device!

How It Works: YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer) enables each user to create their own custom Multiboot UFD containing only the distributions they want, in the order by which they are installed. A new distribution can be added to the UFD each time the tool is run.

If you run YUMI from the same location you store ISO downloads, they should be auto-detected (*See Known Issues Below), eliminating the need to browse for each ISO.

Other Notes: If MultibootISOs was previously used, you must reformat the drive and start over. YUMI uses Syslinux directly, and chainloads to grub only if necessary, so it is not compatible with the older Multiboot ISO tool. Although I do plan to add back the capabilities of MultibootISOs as time permits.

The distro uninstaller works great, but unlisted ISO's that have been added must currently be manually removed!

Basic Essentials to create a MultiSystem Bootable USB Drive

  • Fat32 Formatted USB Flash or USB Hard Drive
  • PC that can boot from USB
  • Windows XP/Vista/7 host to create the Bootable USB
  • YUMI-0.0.4.4.exe
  • Your selection of ISO Files

YUMI can create a UFD containing one or all of the following

Known Issues:

Windows Vista/7 Installer, Hiren's Boot CD, Trinity Rescue Kit, OpenSUSE, Backtrack, Avira Antivir, and Dr.Web Live CD files are stored outside of the multiboot folder. Other distribution files remain contained within the multiboot folder. I am open to a simple working solution!

Windows XP Installer ISO will not work, as to the best of my knowledge this would require editing core proprietary files. I am open to a legal working solution.

When using the "Try an Unlisted ISO option", the ISO file name must contain no spaces.

* OpenSUSE (will only boot from a 4GB or smaller USB device). This appears to be an issue related to the use of mbrid. In my opinion, it's better to use standards like drive label to specify location of files.

* When installing Windows 7 or Vista from USB, you must unplug the USB device before the first restart, otherwise you will receive an error stating:

"windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computer's hardware"

Known Bugs:

FIXED: User is forced to Browse for the ISO they wish to use on wildcarded entries where more than one match might exist. A bug exists in YUMI's ISO auto detection feature. If the file the tool is looking for is * wildcarded (can be many different versions), and you have more than one version of that ISO in the same directory, the tool will proceed to install them all on the USB Drive. The workaround is to ensure that only one version of the ISO exists in the directory, or run YUMI from outside of  your ISO directory and manually browse to the ISO you want to use.

Troubleshooting Boot Errors:

While trying to run an ISO from USB, If you get a Boot error saying:

Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area

You'll need to defragment your ISO using one of the following tools:

contig – Command line tool to defragment ISO files.

wincontig – GUI tool to defragment ISO files.

Additional Notes:
Edit non-booting menu entries for the ISO's you have added via the "Try and Unlisted ISO" option, by editing the corresponding entry in \multiboot\menu\menu.lst

If you don't have a floppy drive and get fd0 errors while booting, simply add floppy.allowed_drive_mask=0 to the append line for the troubled entry. Although the best fix is to simply disable floppy in BIOS.

Saving Changes: Persistence can be added to Ubuntu based distributions by using the PDL Casper-RW creator to first create the file on your USB. Then, simply add the word persistent to the append line of corresponding .cfg file found in the /multiboot/menu directory. Only one distribution can use persistence.

To load Ophcrack tables when booted in this fashion, the tables folder needs to exist at the root directory of the USB device. Example E:\tables\vista_free. Download Tables from the Official Ophcrack site and unzip to your USB. You can have both xp and vista tables working together.

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