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VENTOY (Users)

posted by Zyzzle, 08.05.2022, 02:39

> > As Ventoy is only UEFI, it seems to not support FreeDOS or any other
> > MBR-based 16-bit DOS, such as MS-DOS 7.1, since Ventoy requires an
> > EFI-enabled BIOS to run. (It won't run from an CSM-based traditional
> 16-bit
> > BIOS).
>
> Ventoy is not "only UEFI". On the first page on its site it states:
>
> > x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI
> are
> > supported in the same way.
>
> I haven't tried it on a legacy BIOS system yet, though.
>
> For booting UEFI OSes on a system with UEFI bios it works great. Booting
> legacy OSes on an UEFI system didn't work as well for me. Don't rememeber
> the details as it was the last summer I last played with this.

Sure, that's pretty much what I meant: VENTOY won't magically turn a UEFI-only system into a system that will boot legacy OSes like DOS, unfortunately. It will boot on legacy x86 BIOS systems, but only with legacy x86 .iso images. It apparently emulates a CD-ROM drive to boot the .iso and .img files. It also supports .WIM installation and grub Linux bootloaders (that's a huge benefit to those whose systems don't have CD-ROM boot support in their BIOS/UEFI firmware)

All the same, it would be *very* useful for a sysadmin who had to install / deploy multiple OSes on other systems, all through a single large-capacity USB stick.

VENTOY seems like a "little black bag" for OS installation stuff and can store many .isos without bothering with booting CDs or DVDs. It's a great tool, but of limited to no use for DOS users, especially on UEFI-only systems.

 

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