Tag Archives: grub

Welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
27

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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Ubuntu’s Buggy Support for non-ext3fs Partitions

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
10

For the past several months, our support forums have been plagued on and off with a number of weird and inexplicable failed attempts at installing Ubuntu by many users. We’ve finally pinned down the cause of the problem, and it isn’t pretty. Ubuntu (ever since version 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog) will not install properly on a filesystem other than ext2fs or ext3fs.

Unfortunately if you attempt to install Ubuntu with the “/” partition formatted as ReiserFS, JFS, XFS or any other non-standard filesystem, Ubuntu installation will begin like normal and tick merrily along its way until it attempts to install GRUB. At that point, you’ll get a fairly inexplicable and non-verbose “fatal error” message about “grub-install()” failing.

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How to Repair the Windows Vista Bootloader

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
8

There’s a section of the EasyBCD documentation/user manual/wiki that contains more than just information on how to use the program. If you’ve corrupted your bootloader, run into one or more bootmgr-related errors, installed Windows XP or Linux after installing Vista, or otherwise managed to fry, crack, melt, or break the Vista bootloader, then here’s how you fix it.

We’ve compiled information from over twos-years’ worth of experience with fixing broken bootloaders into a single guide, broken up into subsections for varying levels of damage to the bootloader. If you can get into Windows, we advise that you download & install EasyBCD, then follow the instructions in this section of the guide to repair the Vista bootloader from within Windows.

If your bootloader is so damaged that you cannot get into a Windows operating system, then get your Windows Vista DVD out and boot from it. If you don’t have a Windows Vista DVD, grab a copy of our Windows Vista Recovery DVD instead, stick it in your CD-ROM drive, and prepare to boot from it.

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EasyBCD 1.7 Released & Up for Download!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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 Go and grab yourself a fresh, hot, right-out-of-the-compiler copy of EasyBCD 1.7 before your old bootloader realizes what hit it! Another release of EasyBCD is now available after months of beta testing and – in true NeoSmart fashion – brings dozens of new features and innovative ideas to the table; this time with even more versatility than ever.

Yes, there was a name change. Those of you keeping track of our beta builds are almost certainly wondering what happened to EasyBCD 1.61. To be totally honest here, it was supposed to be released 4 months ago – soon after the 1.6 release back in May. But we got caught up adding a couple of tiny features here and there, and before we knew it, we had a full-blown new version at our hands and not knowing what to do with it – so it’s just shipped as EasyBCD 1.7.

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Wikia’s Outrageous Exploitation of the Human Race

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
3

It’s official, Jimmy Wales has gone too far. The founder of Wikipedia is famous for tapping into users to generate content and traffic, building the internet’s largest chain/web of user-generated content and information. From the million+ articles written by users to the billions of incoming links that have given Wikipedia its super-human search result rankings, Wales has clearly mastered the art of human exploitation more than anyone ever has.

Most people are content with things the way they are: after all, it’s for a good cause! Go ahead and exploit humans, we agree, if the end result brings as much benefit and knowledge to the world as Wikipedia did and does. However, earlier this year, Wikipedia did a couple of things that created an outrage in the online community, by banning contributing sources to Wikipedia from getting the credit they deserve.

Now Wales is at it again, this time though, it’s not the greater good that’ll be benefiting: Jimmy Wales is now using end-users to bring in the cash!

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Don’t unplug your boot drive before installing a new OS! Please!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Please, please, we beg you, don’t do it! Even if it seems logical, like it’s the right thing to do, we urge you not to change the boot/primary drive, or otherwise disconnect other drives when installing another OS!

Seriously, we had no idea so many people engaged in this activity until EasyBCD started spreading like wild fire. Here’s a fact for you: 95% of all support requests for EasyBCD in our forums come as a direct result of users disconnecting their Windows Vista/XP drive before installing Linux, Vista, BSD, OS X, Windows 2000, XP, etc. It’s one thing to reinstall the bootloader when you’re done, and quite another to have to recreate the required boot files to make them point the right drive/partition combo.

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EasyBCD 1.5: Multi/Dual-Boot Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, & BSD!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
72

Important! Upgrade immediately and read the docs to make it work!!!

We’ve done it! NeoSmart Technologies has built a better mousetrap, and it’s a beauty. EasyBCD 1.5 is the first and only application to allow users of Microsoft’s new OS complete compatibility with any other OS they might be using! It doesn’t make a difference if it’s Mac OS X or Linux, BSD or Unix; EasyBCD 1.5 means you can boot into it! For too long have Vista’s beta testers been locked-in to Windows simply because nothing else can be easily booted into, but not anymore!

Windows Vista’s new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It’s one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But at the same time, Microsoft shows its disregard for other simultaneously installed operating systems. It overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn’t provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That’s where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!

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Grub Install Disk

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

If I seem a bit happy today, here is why: two days ago we started and finshed our ‘Repairing the MBR without Formatting’ Whitepaper. Basically it tells you the only way (never before discovered) to repair a FUBAR’d MBR without losing any data.
From there we went on to discovering our next project: a bootable Grub install disk/wizard. It will:

  1. Make fixing the MBR a lot easier (removes all Linux related steps);
  2. Make reinstalling Grub for *nix users a simple thing… No more rescue mode

Currently I’m working on this project with some very kind members from another forum, and the research half of R&D is going very smooth. I am personally very pleased with out progress, and we should have a beta out within a fortnight!