Hello, I would like to download Medicat 20.0.6 version, but I've encounted a problem.
I downloaded thie ISO, with version 19.10 with mini windows 10
which works very well (thanks to you), but this file's size is up to 3.30GB, and is only inclueded the mini windows 10 and nothing else.
Are the other tools inclueded in your medicat, not only the mini windows (like acronis)? In your last 20.09 version ?
Because file's size is up to 3.30GB too
Hello, I downloaded the 19.10 mini windows version, which file size is up to 3GB, on a website.
But on your mega link, i wan see the last 20.09 version, up to 3GB too.
Are the other tools like acronis or memtest inclueded, not only the mini windows ?
✔This project is absolutely free to use; I do not charge anything for MediCat USB. ✔ The full MediCat USB aims to replace Hiren's Boot CD/DVD, for bleeding edge computers. ✔ Derivative projects are allowed and encouraged. ✔MediCat USB is clean of viruses, malware, or any kind of malicious code. ✔ Modify MediCat's ISOs and menus as you see fit! ✔ USB bootable using ImageUSB. ✔ Now has a page on http://alternativeto.net/software/medicat-dvd/ ✔ Gluten-free, non-GMO, gender neutral, and no trans-fats!
MediCat History:
I run a PC repair service out of my home called Reset Computers. As a seasoned PC Technician (A+ Certified by CompTIA) in the field for 16 years, I could never find a software toolbox that could fit my personal needs.... Until I found YUMI, which allowed me to customize my own. That got me making multiboot USB sticks, and all was great. However, some older hardware (and picky computers) wouldn't boot from them, rendering them useless. Even the F-key boot menu wouldn't work. Sometimes the BIOS just doesn't support bootable USB sticks for whatever reason, even when set to Legacy Boot in the BIOS settings. So I made a bootable DVD variety, for those finicky computers that refuse to (or can't) boot from USB. So I created a bootable ISO called MediCat DVD in early 2012. I kept working on it and kept it updated whenever I needed to, but never thought about releasing it. The first public release wasn't until February 2nd, 2014. I had a stable home and job so I figured, 'why not?'. Now the project has outgrown DVD-R media, and is known as MediCat USB.
The Project Objective:
My overall goal of this project is to continue where Hiren's Boot CD/DVD left off in 2012; Provide a simplified menu system that's completely overloaded with useful PC tools, be easy to navigate, and remain aesthetically pleasing to technicians. I wanted something elegant, but not too distracting. I didn't want it to come across as too technical-looking, or confusing. So I did what I could to spruce things up. MediCat USB is made with modern 64-bit computers in mind.
Click the Google Drive or MEGA buttons below for the
download directory, or the MAGNET button for the Magnet Link:
Please Follow these steps to help you make a bootable USB stick successfully:
First thing to do is disable any "Real-Time Scanning" in your antivirus apps, including Windows Defender!!!
(Otherwise you will have apps get deleted from your USB drive during creation, and things won't work properly.)
Please understand™:
As much as I appreciate you guys wanting to donate to me, I can't accept donations... This project is my labor of love. It's my way to give back to the tech industry. And it's just overall fun to work on. I have no financial need, so I wouldn't benefit from donations.
However, there are many smaller projects you can direct your donations to (listed below), as they help keep MediCat alive: GBATemp's Patreon page
Can I run the PortableApps on my current PC without booting up MediCat?"
Yes, just mount the MediCat USB, and open Start.exe to launch the platform. These are the same exact apps that get loaded within Mini Windows 10. So if you update them, they will show up updated in Mini Windows 10 as well.
"How do I make this for a 32GB USB stick?"
-Install Ventoy to the drive.
-Open Medicat's .bin file with 7-zip
-Extract the ISOs you want.
-Extract all of the EFI files from the EFI partition.
-Put the ISO files you chose onto the FAT partition of your stick.
-Open MiniTool Partition Wizard (or Windows Disk Manager) and give the EFI partition of your stick a drive letter.
-Then overwrite all the stick's EFI files with the extracted MediCat ones.
-Removing the drive letter of the EFI partition afterwards is completely optional, and doesn't affect the functionality of the drive in any way. "Can I add or swap out the PortableApps with different ones?"
Absolutely, I encourage it! Please feel free to modify MediCat to YOUR individual needs!
"Can I install Mini Windows 10 as my main OS?"
No, it doesn't work like that. It's a WinPE image (Windows Pre-install Environment) that runs in memory. It's primary use is to troubleshoot a troublesome PC.
"Is it free?"
Absolutely. I will never charge money for MediCat, or accept donations. However, feel free to share your ideas, questions, and concerns in this thread. That's how you can give back.
"How often will this be updated?"
All included ISOs on the image will be updated to their latest versions, shortly following each release of Lubuntu every 6 months (April and October). The links here will always be the latest version. The PortableApps are easily updatable by the user, once they have been 'burned' to USB.
"If anyone can make these bootable USB sticks, what makes yours so special?"
Nothing, really. Just simplicity, and convenience on my part. Everything is subjective to opinion of usefulness. My software suite may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if it helps you in the field, yay!
After try this I need to say something.
This tool cannot be better.
From this point... only upload updates is needed and if you want to.
Auto index iso to boot and UEFI & BIOS support.
What more you want? Now seriously, what else can be added to this? What else can be improved at this point?
Amazing job @Jayro.
hello, this for the program, its working good but win10 mini didnt load, i get the error after "lodaing files black screen" at start:
0xc0000428
windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
the digital signature for this file couldnt be verified
hello, this for the program, its working good but win10 mini didnt load, i get the error after "lodaing files black screen" at start:
0xc0000428
windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
the digital signature for this file couldnt be verified
Jayro, I ask you again to reconsider the current distribution format of Medicat.
We have to download 35.3GB of compressed files, extract to a 57.3GB image and when installing it we find that there is only 22.6GB of uncompressed content. What I recommend is:
1. Stop using ExFAT as the default filesystem for the first partition (even if it is the default in Ventoy) and use NTFS, which is much more compatible with the various current partitioning programs for resizing partitions.
2. Resize the NTFS partition to the minimum possible according to the amount of content and then move the EFI partition to the left, next to the NTFS partition.
3. Back up your USB stick only to the last sector of the second EFI partition, therefore backing up only the necessary data.
Following these steps, the current Medicat image would have a maximum of 23GB even without considering compression, everyone could install the image using any program of preference (balenaEtcher, HDD Raw Copy Tool, maybe ImageUSB) even on a 32GB USB stick and then use another partitioning program (like GPARTED) to move the EFI partition to the right and grow up the NTFS partition to get all the disk space.
I hope you will consider this. Thank you!
Jayro, I ask you again to reconsider the current distribution format of Medicat.
We have to download 35.3GB of compressed files, extract to a 57.3GB image and when installing it we find that there is only 22.6GB of uncompressed content. What I recommend is:
1. Stop using ExFAT as the default filesystem for the first partition (even if it is the default in Ventoy) and use NTFS, which is much more compatible with the various current partitioning programs for resizing partitions.
2. Resize the NTFS partition to the minimum possible according to the amount of content and then move the EFI partition to the left, next to the NTFS partition.
3. Back up your USB stick only to the last sector of the second EFI partition, therefore backing up only the necessary data.
Following these steps, the current Medicat image would have a maximum of 23GB even without considering compression, everyone could install the image using any program of preference (balenaEtcher, HDD Raw Copy Tool, maybe ImageUSB) even on a 32GB USB stick and then use another partitioning program (like GPARTED) to move the EFI partition to the right and grow up the NTFS partition to get all the disk space.
I hope you will consider this. Thank you!
The main problem with this, is the lack of being able to make an image without the blank space. For some reason all the apps I use can only either back up the entire drive with all partitions including empty space, or it can back up single partitions and they won't be bootable. So if you know of some magical way to back up a USB stick without the empty partitionless space, I'm all ears. But I always end up with a 32 or 64GB image, no matter what. I'll do some NTFS testing though. I've had good luck using NTFS so far in the past.
The main problem with this, is the lack of being able to make an image without the blank space. For some reason all the apps I use can only either back up the entire drive with all partitions including empty space, or it can back up single partitions and they won't be bootable. So if you know of some magical way to back up a USB stick without the empty partitionless space, I'm all ears. But I always end up with a 32 or 64GB image, no matter what. I'll do some NTFS testing though. I've had good luck using NTFS so far in the past.
I don't know on Windows, but on Linux it's pretty simple. After applying the resize and move in GParted, you can go to the information of the EFI partition and use the value of the last sector as one of the parameters of the command to create the image, along with the full path of the block device of the USB stick, which you can see in the corner upper right. In my case the command to be run on the terminal would be "sudo dd if=/dev/sdd of=medicatwithoutemptyspace.img count=1895018495 status=progress"
I don't know on Windows, but on Linux it's pretty simple. After applying the resize and move in GParted, you can go to the information of the EFI partition and use the value of the last sector as one of the parameters of the command to create the image, along with the full path of the block device of the USB stick, which you can see in the corner upper right. In my case the command to be run on the terminal would be "sudo dd if=/dev/sdd of=medicatwithoutemptyspace.img count=1895018495 status=progress"
I will try this and save this command in notepad++. Thank you for this valuable information. I love working in Linux, so I'll have to give this a try. Luckily I have a spare 240GB SSD as scratch space.
It seems the new WIM boot doesn't work on my PC. I've tested the Windows 10 mini OS and MalwareBytes WIM.
In BIOS mode i get the following error File: \Windows\System32\boot\winload.exe Status: 0xc0000428 Info: The digital signature for this file couldn't be verified.
In UEFI mode i get the following error:
B1InitializeLibrary failed 0xc000009a
I'm using MediCat on a IODD HDD Enclosure using a 64GB RMD hard drive with a freshly written MediCat 20.06 which it's hash was also checked with the Hash check tool.
EDIT: I get the same "The digital signature for this file couldn't be verified" error as well on my laptop which did boot the mini Windows 10 OS from MediCat 20.05. Maybe something did go wrong with the writing process or maybe i need to disable Dual mode while loading the RMD.
EDIT 2: Disabling Dual mode (so it's only MediCat_v20.06.rmd) in my IOD HDD didn't work. Same issue as here above.
EDIT 3: Creating a new VHD and applied the image to the new VHD with Windows Defence Real Time Scanning disabled (forgot to do that on my previous attempt). Still gives me the error here above.
EDIT 4: Same with an USB drive. I had checked the hash of the BIN file and it was still verified by 3 hashes.
I will try this and save this command in notepad++. Thank you for this valuable information. I love working in Linux, so I'll have to give this a try. Luckily I have a spare 240GB SSD as scratch space.
Yes, Linux is amazing, I'm in love with it. I'm testing a new distro every week, although Linux Mint remains my favorite. If you are going to do tests creating images of devices with large partitions (but you know that a lot of it is empty space) and you don't have much free space on another device to save the images counting the empty space, I recommend you first fill the filesystem of the device you want to back up with zeroes (dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/the/mounted/filesystem/zeroes.img bs=10MiB) until it runs out of space, delete the zeroes.img file, and at the time of create the image backup add the parameter "conv=sparse" to the dd command. Thus, the output file will actually write only the useful data, ignoring all zeroes, but whenever the file is read by an app, it will always be the same as the original file (you can see the apparent and real file size through the command "ls -lhs"). Unfortunately sparse files is a feature only for efficient storage in the destination filesystem and not a distribution feature, since the program you will use to upload the image will always read the original file with all the empty space. You can read more about sparse files here.
And friends, .wim file boot errors should be reported on Ventoy's github, which is the project behind Medicat's current bootloader. That said, I'm also having problems using .wim files directly, not from booting, but from video driver. The wim booted images on my computer use only 640x480 resolution, while the same [EFI] .iso images from the previous Medicat version worked at full screen resolution. It would be good if Jayro returns with only .iso files in the next edition of Medicat while Ventoy's .wim boot functionality does not become more stable
Is there any way to burn a flash drive on Linux? I've tried dd but didn't manage to get a working stick. I get an unrecognized file system. And programs that convert .bin to .iso can't handle the image.
First of all, I do really want to thank you for creating this. It has helped many times and saved me so much time helping people with their computer. I'd buy a beer for you.
But unfortunately I don't know too much about partitioning and was wondering why my 128GB USB stick only ends up with a ~64GB medicat partition and leaves the rest unallocated?
For people that are curious, I run my Medicat on a SanDisk Extreme Pro and it is so incredibly fast when installing Windows and booting from it (about 300 mb/s read and 250 mb/s write).
Thanks!
Hi Jayro, really appreciate the work. I got a hold of your distros a couple months back in Jan. At that time it was 19.10 at that latest. Just saw the transition to the Linux and that the whole distro is only available as one, even the mini winpe which I think quite a few others perhaps might also think needs to be separated or needs a separate version of itself. As much as I do like a linux version of medicat, it's not the first thing that I work with, being comfortable with windows not to mention that I could also help others fix some issue with the winpe version over teamviewer or some other means of communications (this is also due to the interface more or less, not everyone is as tech savvy as you, generally speaking. And since others are more familiar with windows it helps them understand medicat more easily in the winpe edition. And I know for sure if I used this current huge ass full linux distro, their minds will be blown out). Although it's not much of an issue, I have lots of space and bandwidth and pretty sure I can find a way to extract it without using imgusb (don't have a current usb with that much space, so haha)
That's not why I came here for though. Last time when I used winpe v.19.10 my network drivers were having a slight malfunction. On some deep digging found out that it was the default MS drivers that were either corrupt or just malfunctioning, and I had to do some more digging extract the esd, search the drivers, remove the faulty drivers and repack it up. I don't exactly remember now, but I think it had 2 different drivers for internet. I think one was for win7 and another for win8/10 and for some reason the session was loading the older drivers and which is what was making it not work. Not just that, even if I installed the correct drivers over it my network card wouldn't work, side effects from the faulty drivers. (I am not sure which was corrupt but I do remember I found 2 drivers for the network)
I'll see if it's the same with the current winpe and might have to fix it again, if so I'll point out the exact drivers which are giving the issue. At least in my case.
Also, a slight suggestion. As much as I like the idea of winpe, it would be a little more productive if there was ever a way to keep a session alive even after reboot. Once you reboot the session is gone, so you can't use drivers which need a restart (I could not also check if the side effects of that faulty drivers would go once restarted, and because I couldn't restart I only had a way to either update on the faulty ones or remove and then reinstall, which during both times tells me to reboot)
I know it's a longshot way and not sure if it's even possible, might have to look around and see on theoven site.
EDIT: What I meant with the keeping sessions alive after a reboot, was like how a live windows on usb works. And I know it's hard to have it live without having to install it normally or make a vhd. But it would be convenient if you could switch back and forth through it, from a live to a portable edition and vice versa. Or perhaps there might be a way to save it as some sort of a session in some temp folder on the usb, again if that's something that seems possible.
Is there any way to burn a flash drive on Linux? I've tried dd but didn't manage to get a working stick. I get an unrecognized file system. And programs that convert .bin to .iso can't handle the image.
The program Jayro used to create the bin image, ImageUSB, adds its own 512 byte header to the image, which removes the image's compatibility with other programs. To do the installation using dd, you just need to skip the header, with the command "dd if=binfile of=usbstickblockdevice skip=1 status=progress".
I believe this installation will be slow because both reading and writing will be done by sectors of 512 bytes, you may be able to speed up the installation with the command "dd if=binfile of=usbstickblockdevice ibs=512 obs=5MiB skip=1 status=progress" but I'm not sure it will work as expected
The program Jayro used to create the bin image, ImageUSB, adds its own 512 byte header to the image, which removes the image's compatibility with other programs. To do the installation using dd, you just need to skip the header, with the command "dd if=binfile of=usbstickblockdevice skip=1 status=progress".
I believe this installation will be slow because both reading and writing will be done by sectors of 512 bytes, you may be able to speed up the installation with the command "dd if=binfile of=usbstickblockdevice ibs=512 obs=5MiB skip=1 status=progress" but I'm not sure it will work as expected
Nice, thank you! I'll try that. I tried a few dd options before, but couldn't find what was not working. And as it takes at the very least an hour to flash the drive (up to 4 hours -_-), I can't try everything out there. ^^
This was not my question. I know of plenty of software that can flash disk images, but your image is incompatible with all of them. I suspected this was because of the .bin format, but as KaMyKaSii found out, it's because of ImageUSB (which seems to be designed to render the images it produces incompatible with other softwares).
Anyway, I managed to flash the image under Linux thanks to KaMyKaSii. From the testing I've done, the quickest way to get a working image is by running this command (compatible with all Linux distros, as dd is preinstalled everywhere afaik):
First of all great job on MediCat toolkit.
I used a new 64GB Sandisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 drive to make it, like the one you used and gives me always the following error:
15:32:18 - Program: imageUSB v1.5 Build 1001
15:32:18 - Date & Time: 06/08/20 15:32:18
15:32:18 - Application Path: "C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\New folder\imageusb\imageUSB.exe"
15:32:18 - Getting list of eligible removable USB drives...
15:32:18 - Adding eligible USB Drive [SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0] to list.
15:32:18 - Ready...
15:32:42 - File C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\New folder\medicat.20.05.01.bin selected.
15:33:31 - Selected - Disk SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 (Serial: 05018ad53b92bdc82fd5 Disk: 2, Part. Type: MBR, Size: 57.31 GB, Volumes: F)
15:33:35 - Created 1 Write Threads. Imaging Starting Soon...
15:33:35 - Write Image Thread started on [SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0] (Disk 2)
15:33:39 - Writing image C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\New folder\medicat.20.05.01.bin to SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 (Disk 2)
17:29:50 - Error: Failed to write to \\.\PhysicalDrive2 at offset 61505273856 (0x52000000).
and doesn't finish the process.
The Medicat bin is good, the hash are correct and i have try it on a borrow usb 128gb and all went good.
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