Create Windows 7 Universal ISO With All Editions Selection On Install with ei.cfg Removal Utility

For Windows users who switch and upgrade from Windows Vista, one difference will be immediately noticeable when installing or upgrading to Windows 7, i.e. Install Windows 7 setup wizard no longer prompts or asks for user selection of which edition of the operating system to install. Instead, each Windows 7 DVD disc or Windows 7 ISO image will automatically install the preset specific edition which it’s confined to.

Although Microsoft does not provide an universal “one disc rules them all” Windows 7 installation media, however the function is indeed supported. User just need to delete and remove the ei.cfg from any Windows 7 ISO disc image to convert the image into universal disc of any edition Windows 7 installer.

For user who has the ISO image of Windows 7, and wish to make it an universal installer for any and all supported editions of Windows 7, as shown in illustration below, now has an easier way to modify the ISO. Instead of manually unpacking and extracting the content of ISO image (or copying files from DVD) to HDD, deleting the ei.cfg and then repacking or rebuilding installation files back into ISO to burn, user can now eliminate troublesome procedures by making use of “ei.cfg Removal Utility”.

The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a simple tool that will disable the ei.cfg from any Windows 7 ISO disc image, thereby converting the image into a “universal disc” that will prompt the user to select a preferred edition during setup. ei.cfg Removal Utility works directly to patch the ISO image, by toggling the deletion bit in the UDF file table to instruct the operating system to ignore and remove ei.cfg, or treat it as if it does not exist. Best of all, ei.cfg Removal Utility can reverse the patching to restore the ISO disc image to its original state when the tool is been used to apply on a disc image that previously been patched by the utility.

ei.cfg Removal Utility is a standalone portable app, and thus no installation required. In fact, the program does not have much user interface. After selecting the target Windows 7 ISO, the disc image will be patched right away. So make sure a copy of ISO backup is done.

Download ei.cfg Removal Utility: eicfg_removal_utility.zip





1. Make a copy of your .iso for safe keeping..
2. Open the .iso in ultraISO
3. Browse to the "sources" folder
4. Remove the file "ei.cfg"
5. Save the .iso
6. Burn at 2x
7. Enjoy
 

How To Fix Boot/BCD 0xc000000f Error Windows 7

This article is specific to Windows 7 but similar errors occur on Vista and Windows 2008/R2.
After rebooting your computer you receive the following error:

Windows Boot Manager
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1.insert windos cd and run a repair your computer option.
File: /boot/bcd
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: an error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.

You may receive a similar error which lists the error code as 0xc0000034 or missing file: \windows\system32\winload.exe instead.
You may also receive further errors after trying to repair the bcd store using bootrec and bcdedit as follows.

The requested system device cannot be found.
The “Windows Boot Configuration Data File is Missing Required Information
The “Windows Boot Configuration Data File is Missing
An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data

Cause and Fix

The most likely cause of this error is that you tried to dual boot two operating systems and then later decided to remove one. This inadvertently may have deleted the bcd boot store. The trick here is to run the above commands in the right order and set your boot partition to active. Let’s get started.

Make sure your boot partition is set to Active

Boot from your DVD and choose the repair option. From the recovery console type “diskpart” and press enter and then type “list disk” to get a list of physical disks installed.
In the example here I only have one disk in my machine, if you have more than one identify the disk which has the Windows boot partition on it and then select it. Select it by typing “select disk 0″ (in my case). Now type “list partition”. The Windows 7 boot partition is a 200 MB primary partition. As you can see here it was on disk 0. Select it by typing “select partition 2″ or whichever number matches your 200MB partition.
Now type “detail partition” and look where it says “Active”. If it says yes then move onto the next section otherwise type “Active” and press enter, Windows should report the partition is now marked as active. Now reboot and boot into the recovery console again.

Repair the MBR and boot sectors

From the recovery console run these commands in this order:

• bootrec /fixmbr
• bootrec /fixboot

Now reboot the machine again into the recovery console and type “bcdboot path to your windows folder“.  Your windows folder will normally be c:\windwows but in the recovery console it may show up as D:\windows so make sure you get the path right. In my case it was “bcdboot d:\windows”. This will will build a new bcd boot store and copy over all boot files needed to boot. Now reboot your machine one last time and it should work. If it doesn’t run the two bootrec commands again.
If you have any additional operating systems you want to add use the bootrec /scanos command.
If you still have issues you may have a system with a GPT disk. In this case you will have an EFI sytem partition that must always be active. See the following if you get Failure when attempting to copy boot files or suspect you have an EFI system.



 2.

Download a copy of GPARTED or a similar partition manager - GPARTED is fine normally.
Burn the ISO to a CD / DVD -- your choice -- a re-writable one is fine - then you can re-use the medium again if you want. You can also create a bootable USB too if you don't have a DVD drive.

Boot your DELL machine from the GPARTED disk.

Change the Active partition to just Primary.
Change the Boot (small partition) to Active -- Don't confuse the Hidden partition with the BOOT partition -- GPARTED will usually show you which is a Bootable partition.

Re-boot -- should work fine.