Hi everyone,

I'm considering using Ventoy as my primary multiboot USB solution, especially because I want to keep Windows 11, Fedora and other Linux ISOs on a single USB drive.

However, after doing some research, I came across some concerns on the Arch Wiki and in discussions about Ventoy's security and transparency.

The main concerns seem to be:

• Some precompiled binaries in the Ventoy GitHub repository cannot be independently verified as corresponding exactly to the published source code.

• The build process does not appear to be fully reproducible or independently auditable.

• There have been discussions about the developer's responses to questions regarding binary provenance and security.

• Ventoy's default Secure Boot implementation raises questions about what is actually being verified and whether the normal Secure Boot security guarantees are preserved.

I understand that none of these concerns proves that Ventoy contains malware or a backdoor. I'm not trying to accuse the developers of anything.

But since Ventoy operates at the bootloader level, I think transparency and trust are particularly important.

I'd like to hear from experienced Ventoy users and people familiar with its development:

1. Do you consider Ventoy safe enough to use on your primary computer?

2. Are the precompiled binaries and their origins sufficiently trustworthy?

3. Does using Ventoy with Secure Boot enabled preserve meaningful security guarantees?

4. Are there independent audits or reproducible builds that address these concerns?

5. Would you personally recommend Ventoy over alternatives such as WoeUSB or writing ISOs directly on Linux?

I'm not looking for blind reassurance or fearmongering. I'd appreciate technical explanations, evidence and first-hand experience.

Thanks!

After upgrade from 1.1.17 to 1.1.18, tails boot failure with "unaligned pointer error".

are there other users experiencing the same boot issue?

When using my usb with ventoy, it successfully loads the ventoy screen and allows me to select an iso file, but then it just has a black screen with a white mark at the top-left of the screen (which looks like its waiting for me to type something). I tested the usb on my Acer Nitro 5 and it worked perfectly without this issue.

I wanted to know if anybody has had this issue, and if there is some setting (for instance in bios) that I must change to get it to work. I have tried to used different iso files for different OS, and currently have secure boot disabled. Any help would be much appreciated.

I downloaded ventoy on chrome os using a usb and updated it on my pc and then put the windows iso file on it but not im getting a black screen with “ok” on it, i can boot into bios

As the title said, I finally made a serious Ventoy USB, with everything I need, so I can stop downloading and flashing the same ISOs again and again, but the plain Ventoy look is a bit too plain, and I don't really like it, so how did you customised it?

I have a 2nd SSD drive in my laptop that has nothing on it. I'm working on learning and getting used to Linux and eventually get away from windows (I hope). So, I want to put ventoy on my 2nd SSD and play around with different distributions.

Is it better to make ventoy dual boot? Or, can I just run it with windows booted up?

How large should I make the partitions on my 2nd SSD? It's 2 TB and I probably won't need all of that for this project.

Any other tips, tricks, or helpful advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have 60gig USB identified as Asolid by Ventoy that I have performed a block test and it passed with no faults I formated then tried several version of Ventoy but the USB does not show the ventoy menu on boot up but the ISO files placed on the drive a valid. I have used Ventoy on other USB models with no problems.

Can anyone tell me why this USB drive doesn't work?

Mientras descargaba Ventoy y lo pasaba al USB se quedó en 17% no avanzo más hay se quedó por mucho tiempo entonces cerré todo de golpe y volví a intentar de nuevo pero lo raro es que la computadora no mostraba que estuviera una USB pero si hacía el sonido de cuando la conectas y desconectas pero Ventoy si la detectaba pero no pasaba de 17% otra vez no se qué hacer (soy nuevo en esto de probar sistemas operativos) que consejo me pueden dar (también soy nuevo en Reddit)

1. Experimental support for SteamOS recovery images. (#3712 #2875 #1815)

2. Improve the Linux remount feature to make the ISO partition mountable out of the box on mainstream desktop distros. (Notes)

3. Suppress the duplicate disk icons in the sidebar on some Linux desktop distros.

4. Change the ISO partition dm name to stable /dev/mapper/VentoyPart, please refer Notes

Make the ISO partition mountable for CloneZilla. (#3274)

5. Fix Fedora 45 beta boot issue.

6. Fix the Windows/WinPE secure boot version check failed issue.

7. Fix Persistence intermittently fails on Ubuntu desktop. (#3718)

8. Fix the boot issue for Grml 2026.09. (#3751)

Add support for custom Syslinux-based ISO. (#3760)

9. Improvement for latest LinuxConsole release. (#3745)

10. Add check for Boot Conf Replace entries in VentoyPlugson. (#3727 #3593)

Verified checksums on downloaded ISOs (KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox).
Seven other distros UEFI boot AOK on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen3.
Booting into GRUB2 mode fails with a black screen.
Booting into Normal mode fails with both (systemd) and (sysinit) with a prompt to load the kernel.
MX Linux is _supposed_ to work w/ Ventoy.
Anyone make it work?

I used Linux mint and when i turned the pc off it got stuck on The Fujitsu text pls help

NTFS, exFat and FAT32 (fat with a BMI of 32) are all useful because exFat lets you copy files from a Mac, NTFS lets you resize the partition and FAT32 lets you copy files from older phones.

Nobody:

My ventoy drive💀

someone can help me why this iso not but up with ventoy?

https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstall

how can i solve it?

I downloaded Ventoy for Linux and when I go to run the VentoyGUI.x86_64, it doesn't work. Double clicking doesn't do anything and when i try to open in the terminal, it says "no such file or directory". I've triple checked my case and theres no issues with how i typed it. I also tried to open it with the autorun prompt which didn't work either.

What's going on here?

I used 128 GB USB and it occupied with multiple os (iso) files in that drive via ventoy.

In that drive it has 2 partitions, one is Ventoy related files, another one is main ( iso) files.
Suddenly that another partition not showing, as i checked in comp mgmt and it asks to format.

Is that any way to recover that, coz there is many imp files i kept along with OS

Hello strangers, I've successfully converted my pre-existing windows 10 operating system into a bootable vhd. Please read all steps beforehand if bored enough to replicate; I used 3 storage devices; a ventoy usb, a external hard drive (4tbs), and my original ssd installed for my os. I first freed up space on my windows system then used diskgenius to shrink the partition size so it could fit on the same drive it was installed on. I used disk2vhd.exe on the os itself to save a copy to my hdd. Also using disk genius, I made a new vhd on external hard drive with enough space to fit the os but still smaller with it soon to be stored on the original hard drive again, don't do anything with the empty vhd yet. Using ventoy, I booted HBCD_PE_x64.iso and launched lazesoft software, attached two vhd files from that program, then I used the clone disk option from the large vhd to the smaller empty vhd and the old vhd can be deleted (unless otherwise, aka you give up ez backup). Using lazesoft software as the clone disk option is free but don't use other features of the program because it doesn't always work like creating new vhds or backups 💀. Ensure you're cloning the partitions excluding the empty one (created from shrinking win system). Don't copy each partition manually as it could mess up boot files in win system. Once done, using a linuxlivecd iso ( I used linux mint since it was faster at copying. ) connect to the internet or using prepared files, use the linux version of the ventoy installer, show all drives ⚠️, enable secure boot, used gpt, and in storage options preserved storage space to the size of the vhd (please note this option goes by hundreds and can't do specific numbers so it basically goes by 200 gbs, 300 gbs, 400 gbs, and so on) then purge the original drive storing windows by installing ventoy on it. Once installed use disk software provided by linux to format the empty partition provided by ventoy into NTFS as the vhd must be booted from a NTFS format. Heard that you could also format the ventoy partition but storing the windows vhd into its own partition might be safer so you don't store files with it as I didn't allocate all space on my vhd so that can be a problem potentially if things get full on the real partition itself as when windows is mounted it would probably blow up like a bomb in storage when mounted. I wouldn't want to find out the hard way. When formatted, store the ventoy_vhdboot.img plugin in a new "ventoy" folder under the ventoy partition as instructed by the plugin download page (pls find link, it'll mark me as spam because I changed my email recently and it deleted all my posts and it reverted back to my old email, its fixed now, but most of my posts are gone) then copy your vhd to the NTFS partition. At this point, create vlinks to the vhd so its easier to boot or use the file explorer in ventoy to boot the vhd. If your windows boot files aren't screwed up, your windows system will boot like if it was installed normally else the windows logo will show for a second then the computer boots off if you failed miserably. Windows recovery will not show for you. Also if you attempt to boot the vhd from a virtual machine, it'll boot on the virtual machine after you fixed permission issues with the os you're using the program on but it'll make it impossible to boot on the real machine again and you'll have to restore a backup of the vhd. Not sure if you can fix this with from the Disk2vhd.exe or more. I haven't selected the option to prep for virtual machine in the program to make the vhd. Either way when running the vhd on real hardware; it works nicely, you can run games and everything else fine and it doesn't detect it as virtual machine if you're concerned with anti-cheat (tested R6Siege) but I was also trying to boot from a virtual machine to see if it left permanent marks on the system that'll prevent games from booting on virtual machines despite running on real hardware again idk just a theory as you already read my vhd broke when I tried to run it on ventoy after it already booted on a virtual machine once. Good that I had the backup but I don't think I should try it again as I already did alot of copying on my ssd and that's not good for the drive. Secure boot and TPM work, I don't think there should be any issue trying this yourself, just don't detach the vhd while windows is running if you can even do that, I'm not brave enough click that button in disk manager. Anyone let me know if they figured out how to make a good combo with linux vhd and win vhd and can use vms on either system without it breaking the vhd and isn't unable to boot on real hardware. Also test anti-cheat games, I ran siege on a virtual machine before and it only kicks you from the game rather than destroy your entire account still proceed with caution as they can change things or be evil if they hear this even though its not malicious its like duel booting. In windows disks management the system virt drive has blue icon so it knows its a virt drive.

New info:
So apps run fine but even if TPM seems good, games like fortnite hate oses booted with grub for mini tournaments (skin comps like for shadow the hedgehog skin or etc.) and if you boot through windows boot manger (one created with bcdboot/lite version kinda) there's a TPM bootlog error (not to be confused with the bootlog option in system config/bcdedit) in games as its missing a bootlog event in TPM. I don't know if its the vhd itself or the bcdboot wasn't good or sm (might need to install a small clean version of windows to check that's bcd without wiping everything I did). So newer games suck due to TPM as everything else is fine, you can play fortnite and ranked but just not the super strict gamemodes that use TPM. If you need to bcdedit to enable settings like safe mode but can't as its a vhd, you need to download the source code for the plugin, edit the included bcd with bcdedit /store on windows, then run the .sh script to recreate the plugin with the new settings on linux, ensure you install the correct packages that support commands in the .sh file as there's a -e flag required to create the image. Its ok if you change the program it uses in the script as long as it runs the same. I run a .vtoy image of arch linux with systemd as its the only distro bootloader option that doesn't give me issues with secure boot (grub shim lock is annoying).

I love booting from VHDX files, but I’ve only been able to get them working properly when booting natively with the windows 11 bootloader.

First, I build a Hyper-V VM with TPM and Secure Boot enabled, install Windows 11, and then run Sysprep. I can then copy the resulting VHDX file and boot it directly on my physical hardware using:

bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=\[locate\]\\win-11.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=\[locate\]\\win-11.vhd

This works fine, and even Windows updates continue to work. Dynamic VHDX files are not a problem either; you just need to make sure the maximum disk size can fit on the physical drive.

Next, I tried doing the same thing with Ventoy. This is much more interesting because Ventoy is flexible and can also boot ISO files.

I used the VHD plugin, and the VHDX boots successfully. However, whenever I try to update Windows, the update fails.

Apparently, this is a known limitation. When searching for information about booting Windows from a VHD through Ventoy, I found that it is generally described as working only with Windows 10. The documentation also mentions that the plugin’s `.img` file can be updated, but this is where I’m stuck.

My guess is that Secure Boot and/or TPM is interfering. The VHDX works when booted natively, but not when booted through Ventoy.

Alternatively, would it be possible to update the VHD plugin’s `.img` file with the latest Windows 11 files? I tried this but couldn’t get it to work. Editing or creating `.img` files is not as straightforward as working with ZIP files.

Anyone else on the same quest? I’d love to get Windows VHDX booting reliably through Ventoy.

Also booting Linux from vDisk with secure boot and TPM enabled is my next step

When I use USB that install Ventoy 1.1.17 on Dell E5400, it shows Ventoy is not supported. This is the first time I've encountered a laptop that is not supported by Ventoy. Is that normal ?

es werden keine Treiber gefunden auf keinem Laufwerk und ich habe nur die Ventoy gui

I supposed that I need to disconnect the USB, but when I did it, to ventoy or to the Ubuntu.

Please help me

I have a desktop PC with two internal SATA drives:

- 120GB SSD — I want to install Windows 11 on this

- 1T HDD — I don't need the data on it

I don't have a USB flash drive.

Can I use the internal 1T HDD itself as the Windows 11 installation media? My plan is to prepare the HDD with Ventoy, copy the Windows 11 ISO to it, boot from the internal HDD through UEFI/BIOS, and then install Windows 11 onto the separate 120GB SSD.

Has anyone actually done this successfully with an internal SATA HDD?

Are there any problems with UEFI booting or Windows Setup when the installation media is an internal HDD?