Tag Archives: download

EasyBCD 2.1.2: Fedora 16 GRUB2 support and bugfixes

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EasyBCD LogoHello everyone! We have a new EasyBCD build with relatively minor changes. In keeping with our promise to release more often, we’re releasing this small EasyBCD updated that brings brings exactly one update, one new feature, and one bugfix to the table.

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.

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EasyBCD 2.1.1 and Digital Signatures for All!

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Hello, everybody! EasyBCD 2.1.1 is here with the usual roundup of minor bugfixes, small improvements, and various enhancements that come with the regular point releases. The initial EasyBCD 2.1 release has proved to be a very solid and stable build, with no major issues and only a few minor quirks needing adjustment; but more on all that later. When we released EasyBCD 2.1 we also announced a new paid licensing scheme for commercial use – and today, you the community, our beloved users of EasyBCD get to reap that reward!

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.

digitally signed!

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Windows Recovery Discs Updated, Reinstated

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Windows Logo

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!

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EasyBCD 2.1 and Some Big Changes

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EasyBCD Logo

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.

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Open Source, 100% Compatible ln for Windows (and Junction Point library)

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We’ve been huge fans of symlinks for forever, and even posted about Windows Vista’s new mklink commandline utility with quite the passion back in 2006 when the ability to create soft-links from the commandline was first added to Windows.

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.

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Free Download: Timeline 2.1 Home Edition

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Four months ago (though it does feel like much, much less than that!), we posted about the release of Genie Timeline 2.0. Timeline, in both its free and paid Home/Pro editions, has been well-received around the globe – the free backup software market is severely undersaturated, especially when it comes to good stuff that actually works.

Earlier this month, Genie-Soft released Timeline 2.1 which fixed a number of issues and greatly improved the performance. For the next 24 hours (well, 23 actually as of the time in this posting!) Genie Timeline 2.1 Home Edition is available 100% for free on Giveaway of the Day.

Download: Genie Timeline 2.1 Home Edition

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Welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!

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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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EasyBCD 2.0 RC1

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EasyBCD Logo

I’m pleased to announce that the EasyBCD 2.0 beta program, years in progress, has now reached a release candidate build with EasyBCD 2.0 RC1 Build 100.

Please help us make the 2.0 gold release a perfect build by downloading and testing EasyBCD 2.0 RC1. There’s a very long list of changes, you can view the build-by-build changelogs in the link above.

If all goes well, we can expect a 2.0 RTM release in the very near future, God willing.

Thanks!

Genie Timeline 2.0: Quality Free Backup For All

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Timeline LogoA lot of people have been asking where I’ve been the past several months: why the blog has been void of updates, why EasyBCD 2.0 is taking so long, why the image gallery still hasn’t been properly updated, and so on and so forth. With university was over and done with, I was supposed to have more time on my hands to dedicate to NeoSmart Technologies. If I had to point the finger of blame, it would rest squarely on Genie Timeline 2.0.

For the past year, Genie-Soft (my current employer) has been working on a revolutionary new — and free — backup program. Anyone that has ever searched for a professional backup solution has probably experienced firsthand just how difficult it can be to find something fast, powerful, and easy to use… and forget about being free, too.

Timeline 2 pushes the idea of “constant data protection” with real-time monitoring of changes to your data and intelligently scheduled backups of your files. You don’t schedule backups, they just happen in response to the modifications you make. You just run Timeline in the background, and you’re instantly protected. Files are versioned, clustered, and indexed then intelligently purged as needed to save space.

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Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs

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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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