Welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!

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!)

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The Woes of Windows Vista/7 Mapped Network Drives

One of the biggest, bestest, and most-hyped features of Windows Vista (according to Microsoft, that is) was the brand spanking new TCP/IP networking stack. Ask us, it sucks. Network performance hasn’t improved any over the ancient stack used in XP (nor should it – it’s not like there’s anything new in IPv4) though it does add better IPv6 support out-of-the-box and ships with some even more functionality in Windows 7. But more importantly, Microsoft threw out decades of testing and quality assurance work on the existing Networking Stack and replaced it with something rather questionable.

We’ll be following up some more on this topic from a technical side later in another article, but for now, an example that most of you are sure to have come across if you’ve ever tried to map network drives before:

This popup is shown at system startup if you have any mapped network drives to UNC shares which are not protected with a username and password. If you map a network destination that does require authentication, Windows will map the drive OK. To further complicate matters: this message is shown only when you startup from a cold boot! If you restart your PC (vs shutdown and powerup), it won’t appear.

Resolving the issue is straight-forward enough: just double-click on the network drive in My Computer and it’ll automatically, instantly, and silently connect. Which makes one wonder why Windows couldn’t connect in the first place.

Good question.

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Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs

If you’re like most PC users, you probably got Windows 7 with a new PC or laptop. And if you’re like 99% of the population, you get your new machines from one of the major manufacturers. Dell, Acer, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo; who all have one thing in common: they don’t give you a real Windows 7 installation disc with your purchase. Instead, they bundle what they call a “recovery disc” (that’s if you’re lucky – otherwise you’ll have a recovery partition instead) with your machine and leave it at that.

It doesn’t matter that you just paid a thousand dollars for a machine that comes with a valid Windows 7 license – your computer manufacturer just don’t want to spend the money (or perhaps take on the responsibility) of giving you a Windows 7 installation DVD to accompany your expensive purchase.

The problem is, with Windows 7, the installation media serves more than one purpose. It’s not just a way to get Windows installed, it’s also the only way of recovering a borked installation. The Windows 7 DVD has a complete “recovery center” that provides you with the option of recovering your system via automated recovery (searches for problems and attempts to fix them automatically), rolling-back to a system restore point, recovering a full PC backup, or accessing a command-line recovery console for advanced recovery purposes.

NeoSmart Technologies is hosting a copy of a Windows 7 Recovery Disc for your convenience. It’s a ~150 MiB download ready to burned directly to a CD or DVD. It contains an antivirus scanner, access to system restore, Windows backup, memory diagnostics, and command-line tools for advanced repair procedures. Please note that this download is no longer free, due to licensing restrictions imposed upon us.

What it does: The Windows 7 Recovery Disc can be used to access a system recovery menu, giving you options of using an antivirus, System Restore, Complete PC Backup, automated system repair, and a command-line prompt for manual advanced recovery.

What it doesn’t do: You cannot use the Windows 7 Recovery Disc to re-install Windows – it only fixes (not replaces!) Windows.

Why you need it: If you bought your PC from a major retailer, you didn’t get this CD with your hefty purchase.

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Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras

Users attempting to upgrade from Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to Windows 7 Build 7100 (the unofficial RC1 release leak), are greeted with the following "compatibility warning" dialog:

Windows 7 has discontinued Vista's "Ultimate Extras"

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition’s "Ultimate Extras" have been a constant source of derision and anger from Vista users ever since its release 3 years ago. If the blog posts are to be believed, millions of users purchased Windows Vista Ultimate Edition in the hope that the added-value "Ultimate Extras" package – which was left un-described and of unknown worth at the time – would turn out to be a good investment.

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Windows 7 Wallpapers Now Available for Download

NeoSmart Technologies’ gallery of Windows Vista wallpapers has been a huge hit over the past several years – despite what anyone might say about Vista itself, its collection of wallpapers and fonts is top-notch. And now it seems that Windows 7 isn’t going to be any different – from what we’ve seen, the wallpapers shipping with Windows 7 are pretty darn good.

The Official Windows 7 Wallpapers are now available for download from the NeoSmart Image Gallery. Only several wallpapers have been released accompanying various Windows 7 builds thus far, but we’ll keep adding new ones to the gallery as they’re shipped.

Here are some of our favorite new wallpapers:

 

  

You can see these and more at the gallery here, along with the old Windows Vista ones here and here.

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Shipping Seven is a Fraud.

A blog titled Shipping Seven has gotten a lot of traffic recently for their article about Windows 7 and the MinWin kernel – namely, how they’re actually one and the same. The argument offered by “Soma” is that Windows Vista’s kernel (which is what Windows 7 will be built on) is MinWin ad that it’s already on every Vista desktop out there.

Whether or not MinWin is the very same kernel that went into Vista or not is officially unknown at the moment; but what we do know is that Shipping Seven is either one huge fake, or else that the Windows core programmers at Microsoft are so stupid that they don’t know the first thing about coding, kernels, operating systems and compilers.

The post at Shipping Seven is littered from beginning to end with fallacies, lies, and incorrect deductions that anyone with even the most basic coding skills would know better than to ever post, especially not when attempting to pass it off as the work of some of the more talented coders out there.

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Windows 7 FactsCentral

As a first-step in our coverage of Windows 7, we’ve created the Windows 7 FactsCentral site, accessible either via our wiki or through the following direct link:
http://win7.neosmart.net/

The Windows 7 FactsCentral site is intended to be a one-stop information center, where info about available builds, verified facts regarding Windows 7, etc. are available in encyclopedia format (verses the chronological article-nature of posts here on The NeoSmart Files).

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Introducing NeoSmart Coverage of Windows 7

Press Notice: NeoSmart Technologies will by providing blow-by-blow reports regarding the next version of Windows, as the facts come in.

As always, NeoSmart Technologies remains committed to providing accurate and verifiable information from trustworthy sources. We’re also dedicated to providing reports/articles regarding content that our readers deem important and newsworthy; so you’ll always be able to find the latest accurate information regarding the Microsoft’s next OS at The NeoSmart Files.