iVentoy 1.0.41 Final

Installing Windows or Linux on twenty machines usually means twenty trips with a USB stick.

iVentoy replaces that walk with a network boot server: drop your ISO files into a folder, point the client machines at the network, and each one gets a boot menu.

It runs on Windows or Linux, needs no hand-written TFTP or DHCP configuration, and the free edition drives up to 20 client machines at a time.

What iVentoy Actually Does

iVentoy is a PXE and HTTPBoot server with a browser-based console. You copy ISO files into its iso directory, start the service, and the folder layout you built becomes the boot menu clients see.

Each ISO is served as-is, with no extraction or conversion step, so the client boots the vendor's own installer exactly as it would from disc. Version 1.0.41 handles more than 110 operating system families, from Windows and WinPE through the mainstream Linux distributions to VMware ESXi and FreeBSD.

The console lists every connected client with its manufacturer, model and MAC address, which is how you tell the machines that picked up the menu from the ones that never did.

Secure Boot Arrives in 1.0.41

Secure Boot support is the headline change in this release, and it is genuinely new - every earlier version made you switch Secure Boot off in each client's firmware first.

It covers x86_64 clients only, and it arrives in two flavours. Standard mode needs nothing done at the client, but it cannot boot ISO files with an unsigned bootloader and it gives up the unicode boot menu, boot passwords and the UEFI resolution lock.

ByPass mode keeps every feature and asks you to enroll iVentoy's key once, at the first boot of each machine. The old behaviour survives as a third setting if you would rather leave Secure Boot switched off.

Free Edition and Pro Edition

The file on this page is the Free Edition, and free here means free forever rather than a trial - no time limit, no nag screen, no expiring features. There are ceilings, though, and one of them catches people out.

The 20-client figure is a cap on simultaneous boots rather than on machines you own, so a lab of sixty goes through in three passes. Commercial use is where the licence actually bites - if this is running in an office, the paid edition is the honest choice, and one licence binds to two server machines.

Worth knowing before you plan around it: ARM64 clients are a Pro feature, so a free server will not boot ARM hardware even though iVentoy supports it.

The Two Things That Stop It Starting

If you double-click the Windows executable and nothing at all happens, the missing piece is almost always the Visual C++ 2019 redistributable. Install it from Microsoft, run iVentoy again, and the console opens in your browser on port 26000.

The other snag is DHCP, because iVentoy ships a DHCP server of its own that will argue with your router if you leave it enabled.

Proxy and ProxyNet modes exist for exactly this. They let your existing DHCP server carry on handing out addresses while iVentoy answers only the boot request, which is the setting you want on any network you do not fully control.

Why Your Antivirus May Object

Scanners flag files inside the iVentoy package, and that is worth understanding rather than clicking past.

To let a booting Windows client read an ISO across the network, iVentoy loads a kernel-mode disk driver on that client, and to get the driver accepted it adds a self-signed root certificate to the trusted store. A report filed against version 1.0.20 in May 2025 documented both, and dozens of engines on VirusTotal flag the driver file as a result.

The behaviour has a real purpose and the project has never obscured it, but it is also the same technique used to sideload malicious drivers, and it is not explained anywhere on the developer's own site. That makes it a decision to take deliberately rather than a false positive to wave through.

iVentoy and Ventoy Are Not the Same Tool

Both come from the same developer and both work on the same principle, copying ISO files without converting them, but they are separate products for separate situations.

Ventoy writes a boot menu onto a USB stick you carry to the machine, which is what you want for a single repair or a computer with no working network. iVentoy keeps the ISO files on a server and sends them over the wire, which is what you want when there are ten machines waiting in the room.

Neither one replaces the other, and most people who run iVentoy still keep a Ventoy stick in a drawer for the days when the network is the broken thing.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is easy: if you can count the machines on one hand, a USB stick is less work than standing up a server.

Rufus writes a bootable Windows or Linux stick in a couple of minutes and is the sensible default for one-off installs. balenaEtcher does the same job across Windows, macOS and Linux and verifies the write afterwards.

YUMI and YUMI exFAT build multi-tool rescue drives, the exFAT build being the one that accepts ISO files larger than 4 GB.

MultiOS-USB and UNetbootin cover similar ground with a smaller footprint.

Two hardware facts rule iVentoy out before the licence does: a client with no wired network port, and firmware that has no PXE or network boot entry in its boot order.

Tools for the Rest of the Chain

iVentoy serves ISO files, it does not create or repair them, so the rest of the workflow sits in other tools.

UltraISO and PowerISO edit and convert disc images when one needs changing before it goes into the folder.

ImgDrive mounts an image as a virtual drive, which is the quickest way to confirm an ISO contains what you think it does.

At the Windows end, WinToUSB builds portable Windows installations on a stick and WinToHDD reinstalls or clones Windows with no removable media at all.

Clonezilla takes over after the build, copying one finished installation across the rest of the room.

Guides Worth Reading First

Our guide to putting several ISO files on one USB drive with Ventoy covers the portable version of the same idea, and the YUMI exFAT walkthrough does it for drives carrying oversized images.

Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware is the one to read before pushing Windows 11 out to older clients, because iVentoy carries its own bypass for the same hardware checks.

For the operating systems themselves, there are step-by-steps for creating a bootable Ubuntu drive and for dual-booting Windows and Linux on one SSD.

Running ChromeOS Flex from a USB drive is the one for machines being repurposed rather than replaced.

More options sit in the HDD, SSD and USB category.

Quick questions

Download iVentoy 1.0.41 and see how it handles your ISO folder, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.