We’ve been hard at work for the past couple of months developing a new and ridiculously easy to use translation toolkit (that we’ve decided to open source) which will power the upcoming EasyBCD 2.2 release, giving it the superior intellect required to speak dozens of languages fluently… with your help.

While we have some volunteers already working on translating EasyBCD into a few languages, we need your help to get the word out there and get quality translations for as many languages as possible. The process itself couldn’t be easier, and the end result is both satisfactory and rewarding! (What could be more satisfactory than helping millions, or more rewarding than having your name in EasyBCD’s “About” box and on our website?)

How to Help
Download a copy of the NeoSmart Localization Toolkit (currently in beta) from this thread in our forums. While you’re there, drop us a line letting us know you’re interested in translating language insert language name here so no one else wastes their time when you’re already on it. Then just run the exe, load up the translation files, and get cracking. More info and picture-by-picture instructions are in the previously mentioned thread. We’ll have another post here soon to officially introduce the NLT and our reasons for creating a new localization framework soon.

Please note that you’ll need to either download a copy of EasyBCD 2.2 beta or grab the latest version of the language files from the GitHub page to get translating.

We’re especially looking for help translating EasyBCD into the following languages (in alphabetical order):

• Arabic
• Chinese (Simplified)
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Japanese
• Korean
• Russian
• Spanish

And before we bid you goodbye, salaam, adiós, au revoir, bis dann, or sayonara, we leave you with this screenshot:

Unlike some of the affected open source software that is listed on CNet, EasyBCD does not use a copyleft license that lets companies and individuals do whatever they want with EasyBCD and repackage it in whichever manner they choose. In fact, in the past whenever we were asked why one of the most popular freeware products available online was not open source, we have repeatedly insisted that the ability to maintain control over the distribution and packing of EasyBCD to ensure an ongoing comfortable and friendly user experience has been our number one reason.

CNet is of course not the only download site using these so-called “downloaders” to bundle unwanted software that unsuspecting users would normally not install. They are, however, one of the largest and prior to this, also one of the more respected download entities. As of today, we shall be contacting any and all companies and sites that use custom “installers” to download/install EasyBCD as this is in direct violation of the EasyBCD license.

While this could not come at a less opportune time, with EasyBCD currently being the 11th most popular download in the System Utilities category on Download.com, we feel that maintaining a fluid and smooth end user experience, uncluttered by various intrusive softwares, is a tradeoff well worth making in order to never be associated with an unsavory experience in the minds of our users.

NeoSmart Technologies would be thrilled to maintain our listings for EasyBCD and other NeoSmart products on Download.com, and we have historically directed many users there to get their downloads. As such, our offer is simply as follows:

• If CNET and other download companies wish to continue, as they did at one point, hosting EasyBCD on their own servers, then it must be in unaltered, unmodified, and non-bundled form.
• If CNET and other download sites do not wish to host the setup package themselves, then they should hotlink the latest version of EasyBCD directly from our servers. The direct download links provided in our PAD files always permit the hotlinking of the latest version of our software, providing direct access to the downloads in question.
• If CNET and other download companies are not willing to refrain from bundling EasyBCD with any other package, installer, downloader, or other non-authorized bundleware nor willing to link to EasyBCD off of our official download servers, then we must unfortunately and with much regret demand the the immediate delisting of all NeoSmart products being provided in anything other than their virgin installer package as it was originally created.

The latest versions of the EasyBCD installer, as well as those of our other popular software and products, are all digitally signed by NeoSmart Technologies. In short, any download for a NeoSmart product must make available the untampered, digitally signed installer as it was originally released by ourselves. Authentic NeoSmart setup packages can be recognized by means of the following digital signature when viewing the file properties:

We are sorry to have to be making these demands, but are left with no other choice as we have always and forever prided ourselves in providing top-notch quality products and a wonderful user experience. We constantly turn down very lucrative and alluring offers to bundle EasyBCD with other “unwanted products” in exchange for rather princely sums of money. Fortunately, our custom, non-GPL/non-opensource license for these softwares allows us to stipulate and demand that download partners conform to our distribution policies. We look forward to updating this post soon with the good news that CNet and others (currently Softonic) have complied with our terms of distribution. A copy of this request has been filed with Upload.com support under case number 111205-000208.

In the meantime, anyone looking to obtain EasyBCD and other freeware or shareware from a download catalog should look at Softpedia (our EasyBCD listing there) and FileHippo (not currently hosting EasyBCD) as good alternatives. In fact, both have text on their site indicating that they pride themselves in providing clean and non-intrusive downloads to original and unmodified packages. We also advise any other freeware authors and developers hosting their files with Download.com to double-check and make sure that their users are not being taken advantage of unawares, and to follow suit if necessary.

Update (11:05 AM CST): We have just received an email from CNet informing us that they are no longer using what’s officially called “CNET-Installer” for our products. As such, we have no problem linking to the EasyBCD listing on Download.com once again.

The New Windows 8 Bootloader

Literally the very first thing you notice when installing and testing Windows 8 Developer Preview is the new boot screen. I personally find it to be very cluttered and unorganized, and generally aesthetically unappealing. However, compared to the decades of text-based boot selection menus that people are accustomed to, reviewers are seeing this as a dramatic improvement.

Some of the interesting things we’ve noticed about the new Windows 8 bootloader:

1. The new look
2. Completely new process of loading an OS
3. Integration of repair tools into the bootloader itself

New Look

Hopefully the designers at Microsoft can get their hands on the new boot screen before Windows 8 goes RTM. That said, Microsoft has explained the rationale behind the redesign as being purely function over form – the new boot screen is part of the general overhaul of Windows to use the touch-friendly Metro UI. Microsoft is claiming that the new boot menu is intended to be a more touch-friendly interface – and you can’t really disagree with that, as the appallingly-oversized buttons and labels make it very hard to miss-click “miss-press” with one’s fingers. However, just how many people will be dual-booting on a PC with a touch-only input device, ummm, remains to be seen.

That out of the way, the new boot menu is more than just a visual overhaul, it’s virtually a complete rewrite of the BOOTMGR/BCD bootloader that was first revealed during the Windows Longhorn/Vista beta program. Some of the changes are a little subtle, but the Windows 8 DP builds have introduced some very tricky concepts, evolving the bootloader from just a selection menu to something rather more complicated.

New Boot Sequence

For reasons we have not yet been able to discover, though we are confident they will be revealed in time, Microsoft has chosen to completely change the manner in which operating systems are loaded once selected from the boot menu. The usual boot process that just about any bootloader goes through is something like this:

With Windows 8, this boot process has been changed completely, and now something more along these lines takes place:

It’s a subtle change as the boot menu is not shown the second time around, but the PC actually reboots after making the selection. We’re not clear on why Microsoft is doing this, but if I’d had to hazard a really wild guess, I’d say it’s to clean up the environment that’s been altered/modified/corrupted by the new boot menu. Basically, it seems that the new boot menu interface has become it’s own mini-OS, and is possibly running in protected mode (vs the traditional real-mode bootloader), and as such, needs to reboot to bring the system back into a real-mode that the Windows 8 kernel can initialize from and bring the system from real to protected mode itself. In short: the new boot menu is more of an OS and less of a boot menu than ever before.

Repair Tools Integration

If you were still in any doubt as to just how different the new bootloader was, and how much more of a complete and standalone OS it has turned into, you need look no further than the new repair tools integration. Windows Vista introduced the recovery center, a WinPE-based environment with some tools for both automated and manual repair, on the setup DVD, Windows 7 (in some SKUs and as of certain revisions) copied the recovery center image to the local hard drive and could, if the bootloader itself has not been wiped out, automatically provide an option of loading the recovery center from disk. With Windows 8, Microsoft has gone a step further, integrating the repair tools into the Windows 8 boot menu itself.

As you can see from the screenshots above, the bootloader no longer contains an entry/link to the repair center WIM image, the bootloader and the repair center have instead been merged together. Still, the same problem with the Windows 7 implementation remains: if the bootloader itself has been wiped (which is the most common problem), the recovery center cannot be accessed. In fact, we see no benefits for this implementation over the Windows 7 method, and can only see the drawbacks of enormously-increased complexity and longer load times.

EasyBCD and Windows 8 Developer Preview

Now for what you’ve all been asking: how does EasyBCD play with the Windows 8 Developer Preview? The short answer is, EasyBCD supports Windows 8 DP. The long answer is rather more complicated.

It seems that out-of-the-box, the Windows 8 “pretty” (and we use that word very loosely) boot screen supports only Vista and up. It will not show Windows XP, Linux, or other OS entries (in preparation for Secure Boot? Perhaps). EasyBCD can be installed on Windows 8 (though it will attempt to download the .NET Framework if you haven’t manually activated it, because Microsoft has done a 180 and biting the hand of the developers that powers it, has disabled .NET 1.0 – 3.5 compatibility out-of-the-box in Windows 8), and can be used to add, remove, rename, configure, and generally do whatever you want with entries and the Windows 8 boot menu.

The catch is that as soon as you use EasyBCD, Windows 8 will detect something along the lines of unsupported changes to the bootloader and cease to use the new boot menu / boot screen. It will revert to the Windows 7-style boot menu, including the text-based interface and the original boot sequence. Now, while we personally prefer the older menu, we realize that the majority of Windows 8 DP users are rather anxious to both keep the Windows 8 touch-enabled boot screen and retain usage of EasyBCD’s wonderful goodiness, having apparently never heard of the saying “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” ;-)

Now we’re not sure how/why the Windows 8 boot menu reverts to the Windows 7 menu, because in fact, it is possible to force the Windows 8 boot menu to add unsupported entries if you use only very particular bcdedit commands; but as even something as minor and unimportant as changing the order of boot menu entries in EasyBCD causes Windows to use the old boot menu, it seems we’re missing something. Rest assured, this will all be taken care of in due time, though at the moment it seems rather folly to waste time trying to implement support for what is clearly the alpha stages of the new boot menu and the appropriate course of action would appear to be waiting for the next Windows 8 beta build (rumored to be sometime around February 2012).

EasyBCD, when used from within Windows XP – 7, can be used to add a Windows 8 entry to the bootloader in the same manner that you would a Windows Vista/7 entry. So, in short, EasyBCD supports Windows 8, but Windows 8 does not support EasyBCD :)

EasyBCD 2.1.2 supports the recently-released Fedora 16, which is the first Fedora Linux version to feature the usage of GRUB2 (instead of the old Legacy GRUB). EasyBCD has supported GRUB2 for years now, but it required the addition of a new profile with the names and paths that Fedora 16 uses. EasyBCD also has a new homepage at http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ which is both prettier and easier to remember.

The full EasyBCD changelog is available in the usual place.

Downloads have been posted for both commercial and non-profit/personal users. We’d like to remind everyone that EasyBCD now requires a paid license for use in commercial or other for-profit environments and purposes. Please don’t forget to press the Google +1 and Facebook Like buttons on the download page below! Also, follow us on twitter @neosmart and like us on Facebook to get the latest updates and news!

Download EasyBCD 2.1.2 1.5 MiB

As always, registered users can download EasyBCD from their user control panel.

Some of the changes include nicer icons for all the albums (verses a mosaic of contents), links to full-size images on our extensive collection of tech-related wallpapers, fixing of overall alignment, and a few other cosmetic issues. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or feedback, please do share because we’re (as always) all ears.

For lovers of beautiful backgrounds, we have two “new” collections to share: the official Windows 8 wallpapers to date, and the OS X Lion wallpapers bundle. We’ll be updating the Windows 8 backgrounds with each released build, so check back often! Some samples after the jump.

EasyBCD 2.1.1 is the first of our products to be digitally signed! This is fairly exciting news as it was one of the very last finishing touches that EasyBCD (and the rest of our products, for that matter) has lacked over the years. Today, all this changes as we have finally obtained a digital certificate with which we shall be signing all future releases. No more ugly orange warnings when trying to install a NeoSmart product or a nasty red bar when downloading our software with Internet Explorer 9, we can now prove what you’ve all known for years: our products are top-notch quality and absolutely safe and malware-free.

Now, back to EasyBCD. Here are some of the more important changes in this release:

• Fixed: Advanced settings are not available for PE images
• Fixed: EasyBCD can read and write internationalized names for entries!
• New: Added option to auto-load certain BCD path on startup
• New: Much-improved intelligent loading of BTX Bootloader for FreeBSD and PC-BSD

We’ve worked long and hard on creating an entirely rewritten BTX chainloading stack for EasyBCD, working hand-in-hand with the PC-BSD team to perfect the dual-boot process over a period of several weeks (thank you Dru and Kris!). All BSD users should notice a much more streamlined dual-boot process with this release onwards. We’ve also taken the first steps towards full internationalization support for EasyBCD, EasyBCD can now read and write foreign language names and attributes from/to the BCD store.

Download EasyBCD 2.1.1 (1.4 MiB)

The full changelog is available in the usual place. As always, registered users can download EasyBCD from their user control panel.

While each of these fine web browsers has its own way doing things, ranging from keyboard shortcuts to tab management and process handling, they all more or less pull these off a bit nicer than Internet Explorer ever code. But the one Internet Explorer feature I can honestly say I miss when using Google Chrome is the ability to submit the form being currently modified/filled-in with a keyboard shortcut, especially if it works even if there are multiple forms on the screen.

Searching about for a cross-platform solution to this problem, perhaps a previously unknown keyboard shortcut or else some method of assigning a keyboard shortcut that would let Google Chrome intelligently submit the current form via a keyboard shortcut on both Mac and Windows, it became clear that this feature just doesn’t exist for Chrome. Well, as of yesterday, at any rate…

As of today, this feature does exist and it can be yours by just installing Chrome Form QuickSubmit, a Google Chrome extension that will add the keyboard shortcut alt+shift+s on Windows/Linux and cmd+shift+s on Mac to your Chrome, letting you easily and quickly submit the form you’re filling in without needing to resort to tabs, or gasp the mouse:

Google Chrome QuickSubmit 0.2

Again, the keyboard shortcuts are alt+shift+s on Windows/Linux and cmd+shift+s on OS X. These shortcuts do not, to the best of my knowledge, conflict with any others and there aren’t any known issues with this extension. So go ahead, click the link above, authorize the extension, refresh this page, and test it out in the box below!

Almost four years ago, NeoSmart Technologies published a Windows Vista repair and recovery CD that could be used to treat common boot issues and recover from catastrophic system failure in case you didn’t have a Windows setup CD handy.

Over the years, we’ve added more recovery CDs to the collection, ending up with a complete portfolio of repair CDs for Windows Vista and Windows 7 in both 32- and 64-bit flavors. We’ve had the good fortune of being able to host these CDs on our site in one form or the other for free download to millions of users around the globe.

Three months ago, we were contacted by the legal department at Microsoft Corporation asking us to discontinue hosting these files. Until this point, we were not aware that Microsoft was displeased with our hosting of the CDs and in fact enjoyed a rather healthy relationship with the Microsoft support forums where victims of PC crashes would be directed to our site to download a copy of the repair CDs.

Since then, we have been in talks and negotiations with the Microsoft legal and licensing divisions, trying to work out a method whereby we could provide our users and visitors with access to these CDs once again. Today we’re excited to announce that these CDs are once more available for download!

There’s some mixed good and bad news, however. The good news is that all downloads will be direct HTTP links, so no need to learn how to use a torrent client or fiddle around with open network ports: just plain, standard, direct, and very fast HTTP downloads for all our ISO images. We’ve also taken this opportunity to update the repair CDs and add a virus scanner (powered by ClamWin) as well as some command-line tools and utilities that were missing from some of the images.

The bad news is that there will now be a nine dollar download charge for each CD. There was no way for us to avoid charging this, as we now pay a licensing fee to Microsoft in exchange for making these CDs available, and also pay per download to outsource the high-speed web hosting for these large CD images (150 to 200 MiB, each) to an outside service.

We look forward to updating these repair and recovery CDs over time and adding more tools and utilities to help you save your PCs from the brink of death. We thank you for your patience with us over the past few months during which the downloads were suspended, and truly appreciate your understanding of the situation.

Download Links

Windows Vista Recovery Discs (x86/x64)

Windows 7 Recovery Discs (x86/x64)

For all our loving users, readers, and members out there, EasyBCD 2.1 has just been released and is ready for consumption. Freshly baked, tenderly prepared, and lovingly made, it brings the usual host of new features and updates that a new version of EasyBCD usually brings.

But this build of EasyBCD is a little special — we focused a lot more on improving the user experience over adding new features. We’ve fine-tuned every line of text, every button, every icon. We’ve hidden all we can hide, automated all we can automate, but never at the cost of advanced options; instead, everything is just that much smarter and more intelligent, cutting out the extra steps that left room for confusion. Simply put, EasyBCD 2.1 is all about smoothing out the edges of what has become the world’s most popular bootloader utility.

With EasyBCD 2.1 also comes some exciting changes from the developmental side of things. As you all may or may not know, development at NeoSmart Technologies has largely been a one-man show, with Mahmoud doing the coding and research, with help from an amazing team of moderators (chief of which are Terry, Justin, and Peter) providing most of the ever-important tech suport on our forums. What most people don’t know is that while NeoSmart Technologies has, alhamdulilah, reached epic heights over the past few years, it’s being run entirely on a part-time basis by all of its volunteers.

As a result of this, development has never been as fast-paced as our users would like and the documentation has somewhat stagnated over the years. We have always had some exciting ideas we wanted to try out, new projects we’d like to share, and guides we’d love to write, but unfortunately as hard-pressed for time as we were, these things just never happened. But we’d like that to change, and we’ll soon have people working full-time on NeoSmart projects.

This, combined with what some in the industry have taken to calling the “divide-by-zero” error: a lot of people from big corporations to individual users want to use free software, but have this terrible misconception that because it’s free it must be inferior, which as we all know, is simply not the case. There are also other issues involving EasyBCD and commercial use — it turns out that while we were publishing EasyBCD under a catch-all free license, some of the components we included in EasyBCD could only be redistributed for personal, non-commercial use; thus putting us and our users in a small dilemma.

The solution that we arrived at after much deliberation was to start a commercial licensing program for EasyBCD. Now, we need to say loud and clear: EasyBCD has always been and will always be free for personal use. We hate developers that turn on their own users, preying on their loyalty and support, forcing them to fork out money for software that’s always been free.

That said, as of EasyBCD 2.1, companies and individuals using EasyBCD in commercial settings, as a part of a commercial package, etc. will need to obtain a commercial license. Commercial licenses are currently priced at $24.95 a seat (flexibly defined as per-user or per-machine, your call) with volume licensing available at reduced rates. Simply, if you’re using EasyBCD to make money, you can help invest in making it a better product for yourself and everyone.

Licensed EasyBCD users are given priority support, with the option of discussing custom deployment and/or product customization options. All EasyBCD licenses are lifetime licenses, future updates and releases forever included. We hope you will all stand by us during this transition, and we look forward to bringing new and exciting products to bear in the near future.

Download EasyBCD 2.1 (1.377 MiB)

Buy Commercial License ($24.95)

Major new features:

• EasyBCD setup detects missing or out-of-date .NET 2.0 pre-requirement, and automatically installs.
• New options to boot from hard disk or floppy images. No longer just VHDs, raw disk images now work too!
• Much-improved BCD parsing methodology that works even when bcdedit doesn’t!
• Intelligent external BCD handling. Automatically determines drive settings, and warns if entries aren’t portable as created.
• Added a “No Timeout” option of the boot menu, wherein the selection screen will hang until a selection is made.
• As usual, EasyBCD now features improved and more-resilient support for even more Linux configurations.

A complete list of changes can be found in the full changelog.

Cheers and don’t forget to Like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter @NeoSmart!

However, there are a few things that have forever irked us about the ln lookalike called mklink.exe:

• It’s called mklink and not ln. (I mean, you just get can’t get around that fact)
• The arguments are switched around. `mklink something_doesnt_exist actual_file` is just…….. wrong!
• By default, mklink will create softlinks and not hardlinks. ln requires the /h flag to create a hardlink.
• mklink isn’t smart enough to distinguish between files and folders. You need explicitly tell it via the commandline.
• Even then, mklink has two different switches depending on the type of directory link you want. /D for softlink’d directories, and /J for hardlink’d directories.
• mklink can’t be used outside of cmd.exe (such as in PowerShell). (Hat tip: Jason)
• And, of course,  mklink isn’t open source.

So we made our own.

ln-win is available in 32-bit and 64-bit, uses the same syntax, names, switches, and argument ordering as ln on *nix. And pursuant to our promise to contribute more to open source, ln-win and our Junction Point library is 100% open source, freely licensed under the generous terms of the MIT license.

Perhaps more importantly, ln-win contains an open source Junction Point library. While Win32 APIs exist to create symlinks (on Vista and up), there is no API for creating hardlinks of any kind (for files or folders). The NeoSmart JunctionPoint library provides the following APIs:

	bool CreateJunctionPoint(LPCTSTR origin, LPCTSTR junction);
	bool IsDirectoryJunction(LPCTSTR path);
	bool GetJunctionDestination(LPCTSTR path, OUT LPTSTR destination);
	bool DeleteJunctionPoint(LPCTSTR path);

As you can see, the NeoSmart JunctionPoint library provides all the APIs you need both to create and interact with hardlinks. IsDirectoryJunction can be used for both symlinks and hardlinks, making it a snap to make your code symlink/hardlink aware, letting you intelligently avoid cyclic paths and data duplication for any filesystem traversal needs.

Binaries for Windows x86 and x64

ln-win Source Code on GitHub

While a lot of these may prove to have little to no value to anyone, given how easy it is to make things open source thanks to github, there’s no real drawback to throwing them out there for anyone that may benefit at some unknown point in the future.

We have a couple of hundred miniature projects, test code samples, and other such content across a number of drives to sort through, and whenever we find something useful, this is our promise to the community to share it. To that end, we’ve set up a github repository at http://github.com/neosmart where we’ll be uploading the code, and from where you’re all more than welcome to check it out and contribute back.

Follow us @neosmart for notifications and info on new projects and libraries added to the github repo!

Happy New Year 2011 from everyone on the NeoSmart Team. On behalf of all the NeoSmart Staff, thank you for being here with us this year!

We’re looking forward to more great years to come, and thank you for being with us every step of the way.

We’d previously finished the tutorials for dual-booting Windows 7 with Windows XP and with Ubuntu 10 (complete with picture-by-picture steps!), but now we’re getting started on the real meat: the technical details of just what exactly is going on behind the scenes. The normal OS boot process is one of the most complicated parts of an operating system with just one OS in the mix – with multiple operating systems, each that works in its own way, things get that much more complicated, and it’s always good to have a nice, illustrated guide to refer to.

The first part of the updated documentation is now available in the form of an explanation of how a dual-boot between Windows Vista/7 and Windows XP normally works, plus a NeoSmart exclusive: EasyLDR and its support for multiple top-level legacy NT entries without needing to go through a second NTLDR boot menu, a long-awaited feature that was finally added with EasyBCD 2.0.

EasyBCD Documentation: The Windows XP Boot Process

EasyBCD 2.0 features a number of exciting new features, but some of the most technically interesting details lie in the improved Windows XP support. Besides the linked article which explains the mysteries of EasyLDR and how EasyBCD accomplishes top-level Windows XP support, a large amount of research went into the creation of BootGrabber.exe, a command-line application that we wrote to automatically configure everything needed to set up easyldr or ntldr, complete with automated detection of all Windows NT – 2003 installations on mounted disks, the generation of a corresponding boot.ini/ebcd.00x file, the copying of ntdetect.com and boot.ini to unmounted and unlettered partitions, and changing the active partition.

Hopefully another article will be added really soon to the EasyBCD documentation explaining the powerful command-line features available to users in BootGrabber.exe, which may be accessed via the “Power Console” under “Useful Utilities” in EasyBCD 2.0 and up.

The changes in EasyBCD 2.0.2 correlate to 21 issues in the bug tracker, and can be seen after the jump.

Download EasyBCD 2.0.2 (1343 KiB)

Alas, with this update the EasyBCD setup is no longer 1337 KiB. But that’s OK, we figured you guys would rather the new features and bug fixes over a really, really cool download size. And here are the changes. (Important changes or high-frequency bugs are in red, and the complete changelog to date can be viewed here)

• [EBCD-385] – EasyBCD will crash if an operation that it expected to take a long time finishes instantly
• [EBCD-386] – EasyBCD crashes if you attempt to save entry settings with no entry selected
• [EBCD-387] – Cannot add multiple WIM entries
• [EBCD-388] – EasyBCD crashes if Segoe UI is corrupt
• [EBCD-389] – EasyBCD options dialog crash on international computers that don’t support mm\dd\yyyy format
• [EBCD-390] – EasyBCD crashes if an invalid path to a WinPE image is specified
• [EBCD-391] – EasyBCD doesn’t show actual DEP, SafeMode, Pae in Advanced Settings
• [EBCD-392] – EasyBCD crashes if an invalid path to a VHD image is specified
• [EBCD-393] – Improved boot.ini partition detection
• [EBCD-394] – EasyBCD crashes if corrupt WinPE entry with no ramdisk is present
• [EBCD-395] – Use BootGrabber to set active partition instead of relying on diskpart
• [EBCD-396] – BootGrabber /setactive switch
• [EBCD-397] – Try to get partition information from bootsector, not just partition ID
• [EBCD-398] – EasyBCD crashes if adding a WinPE or VHD entry fails in the AddWindowsVista stage
• [EBCD-399] – Crash removing NeoGrub immediately after adding it
• [EBCD-400] – Select correct disk for boot-partition related operations when editing external BCD
• [EBCD-401] – Update GRLDR to 0.4.5b-2010-07-25
• [EBCD-402] – Crash if bcdedit output contains null character
• [EBCD-403] – Handle IO Exceptions in creation of NTLDR/EasyLDR
• [EBCD-404] – EasyBCD crashes if bcd timeout is greater than 10000
• [EBCD-405] – Ignore exceptions when deleting stub loaders

Special thanks goes to joevt for his help and patience in fixing EBCD-393.

Hello and welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!!

It’s rather hard to believe, but EasyBCD 1.7.2 has been out for over 2 years now, and we’ve been working on Version 2.0 ever since. In that time, a lot has happened. Windows 7 has shipped, ext4fs is the new cool kid on the Linux block, GRUB2 is finally seeing some adoption, VHDs are the new wow, and everyone and their grandmother want a dual-boot between Windows 7 and Windows XP.

Worry not, we haven’t been sitting on our (not-so-proverbial) behinds this whole time. In fact, the entire NeoSmart team – developers, supporters, testers, and all – have been working around the clock to make EasyBCD 2.0 the biggest, coolest, greatest, and awesomest thing ever since the invention of the MBR. And now, over a 150 beta builds later and 2 years in the making, we’re super-pleased to introduce you to EasyBCD 2.0. It’s so incredibly overhauled and improved, so stuffed-to-the-brim with features, so much of a true one-click dual-boot experince, so customizable, so powerful, and so EASY that it took a lot of self-restraint to keep from calling it EasyBCD 10.0!

What’s new, you ask? We’ll get to it. But let’s just first give you the download link, because we know you just can’t wait to get your grubby, geeky paws on it ASAP:

Download EasyBCD 2.0.1 (1337 KiB)

(Yes, it really is 1337 kibibytes in size. And, no, we didn’t do it on purpose. We’re just übercool that way!)

So, what’s new? Lots. Lots, lots, and lots of new. And lots and lots of improved. With less and less and less bugs, too. The official changelog is miles long, but here’s the stuff that we feel really shines. It’s so hard to sort them in a way that doesn’t leave one feature in the shadow of the other, but here goes:

• Complete Windows 7 support (including the pretty-boot screen!)
• Total redesign of the user interface to make the stuff you use more often easier to get to and easier to understand
• Automatic configuration and one-click setup of Windows XP dual-boots. No more mucking around w/ boot.ini and NTDETECT + NTLDR
• Support for multiple top-level Windows XP entries. You no longer need to go through a second NTLDR menu no matter how many XPs you have installed!
• Support for GRUB2 and ext4fs (we’re looking at you, Ubuntu *glare*)
• Boot from ISO images and Virtual Harddisk (vhd) files!
• Create bootable USB drives!
• Change the boot drive on your system (including all the partition management stuff) with one click!
• Rewritten OS X support (yes, again *sigh*)
• EasyBCD BIOS Extender to let you boot from network devices, specific hard disks, USBs, and more even if your BIOS doesn’t support it (thanks to PLoP integration)
• Support for multiple top-level GRLDR entries (in the same vein as XP entries above)
• Improved boot device detection, EasyBCD always runs, even if your boot device is inaccessible or the BCD isn’t installed!
• Loading indicator for lengthy operations
• Better support for loading and managing external BCD stores
• Complete EasyBCD portability. Just tell the installer where to stick it, and you’re set!
• Improved high DPI support
• Ability to create safe-mode entries
• Improved MBR repair, BCD repair, and more!

It’s been a real blast working on EasyBCD 2.0, and we’re really excited to have something we can finally share with the general public. Before we leave you and EasyBCD 2 alone together, some final words need to be said: EasyBCD 2.0 would not have been possible without the help of the entire NeoSmart team, testers, and of course, donors.

A big shout-out to Terry (Terry60), Justin (Kairozamorro), Jake (Coolname007), Alex (Mak 2.0), and everyone else that helped in providing support over the past 2 years. Crazy props to the Grub4Dos team and the PLoP developers.

And some links to keep you busy:

• EasyBCD user manual (it’s severely out-of-date, we’re updating it for 2.0 now)
• EasyBCD 2.0 screenshots
• Support forums

Follow us?

Keep in touch via twitter @neosmart or facebook for constant info and updates!

A Token of Appreciation?

Have we saved you a lot of time, effort, problems, and loss of limb, life, or worse? How much have you saved in support and repair costs? Do you want to say thank you? You can make a donation here:

[donation]