The file structure of AIO (all-in-one) Windows Install ISOs or other non-standard Windows Install ISOs are often non-standard.
This means they may fail to be recognised by the E2B grub4dos batch file or agFM and may fail to boot to Windows Setup (e.g. 0xc000000f error or similar).
The WIMBOOT process assumes standard Windows boot files are present, so the first thing to try is not to use WIMBOOT.
Instead you can try booting to the Ventoy menu system or use the procedure below if using the E2B legacy menu system:
- If possible – use an E2B Removable USB Flash drive rather than a USB HDD drive (or Corsair GTX flash drive)
- Copy the AIO ISO file to the \_ISO\WINDOWS\WINAIO folder (or one of the \_ISO\WINDOWS\xxxxxxx folders)
- Select the ISO file in the E2B Windows Install menu – you should see a prompt to skip WIMBOOT after selecting an XML file (see below):
4. Press ENTER quickly when you see this message so that WIMBOOT is not used.
Tip: You can make E2B automatically not use wimboot by changing the filename and adding the characters NOWIMBOOT to the filename of the ISO file – e.g. \_ISO\WINDOWS\WINAIO\Windows AIO 7_8_10 NOWIMBOOT.iso.
You can skip the 2 seconds delay and user prompt to use WIMBOOT by adding WIMBOOT to the filename (will then not use WIMBOOT automatically)..
If you are using a Fixed-disk (USB HDD) type of E2B USB drive then the AIO ISO may fail to load the ISO as it may be using a Win7/8 version of bootmgr which only looks on Removable media for the \AutoUnattend.xml file used by E2B for non-wimboot operation. You can add an E2B ‘helper‘ USB drive as well as the E2B USB drive to work around this.
Note: agFM only uses wimboot, so if you are UEFI-booting (or Legacy booting), then try using the Ventoy menu system to boot the AIO ISO.