NTloader

Ntloader is a bootloader for NT6+ WIM, VHD and VHDX images.

Compatibility

Ntloader supports BIOS (i386) and UEFI (i386, x86_64, arm64) environments.
It is recommended to use GRUB2 (>=2.12) or GRUB4DOS to boot NTloader.

Download

The source code is maintained in a git repository at https://github.com/grub4dos/ntloader.
You can download the latest version of the binary from GitHub Releases.

Getting Started

Extract ntloader and initrd.cpio onto the disk, and modify the bootloader menu to boot Windows from a FAT/NTFS/exFAT partition.

# GRUB 2 (>= 2.12)
menuentry "Boot Windows NT6+ WIM" {
    search -s --f /path/to/ntloader
    search -s dev --f /path/to/winpe.wim
    probe -s dev_uuid -u $dev
    if [ "${grub_platform}" = "efi" ]; then
        linux /path/to/ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid} wim=/path/to/winpe.wim
        initrd /path/to/initrd.cpio
    else
        linux16 /ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid} wim=/path/to/winpe.wim
        initrd16 /initrd.cpio
   fi;
}

menuentry "Boot Windows NT6+ VHD/VHDx" {
    search -s --f /path/to/ntloader
    search -s dev --f /path/to/windows.vhd
    probe -s dev_uuid -u $dev
    if [ "${grub_platform}" = "efi" ]; then
        linux /path/to/ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid} vhd=/path/to/windows.vhd
        initrd /path/to/initrd.cpio
    else
        linux16 /ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid} vhd=/path/to/windows.vhd
        initrd16 /initrd.cpio
   fi;
}

menuentry "Boot Windows NT6+ on (hdx,y)" {
    search -s --f /path/to/ntloader
    probe -s dev_uuid -u (hdx,y)
    if [ "${grub_platform}" = "efi" ]; then
        linux /path/to/ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid}
        initrd /path/to/initrd.cpio
    else
        linux16 /ntloader uuid=${dev_uuid}
        initrd16 /initrd.cpio
   fi;
}

Credits

• wimboot -- Windows Imaging Format bootloader
• GRUB 2 -- GNU GRUB
• Quibble -- the custom Windows bootloader
• EDK2 -- EDK II Project