BootNext tool - boot any Linux or Windows from Windows 8.1/7/Vista
BootNext is a small but powerful system tool developed for Windows 8.1/7/Vista operating system.
On UEFI firmware(and GPT disk) BootNext tool allows you to boot directly to:
- USB, Network, CD/DVD, Hard drive (using MBR booting)
- Any installed Windows version(Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008/2012 R2)
- Linux descendants like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint etc.
- Mac OS X and FreeBSD (not tested)
- Safe mode in Windows 8/7/Vista
- Windows 8/7/Vista recovery
- Memory diagnostic
Note: List of bootable devices depends on CSM (BIOS emulation) state (enabled/disabled).
On BIOS firmware(and MBR disk) BootNext tool allows direct booting of any installed operating system which has boot entry in BCD (Boot Configuration Data):
- Windows XP, Vista and Windows 8.1/7 also Windows Server 2003/2008/2012 R2
- Linux descendants(Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora), FreeBSD and Mac OS X
- Safe mode in Windows 8.1/7/Vista
- Windows 8.1/7/Vista recovery
- Memory diagnostic
Notes:
a) Using Visual BCD Editor you can create a Linux loader (boot sector loader) with the click of a button
(using Dual-boot Repair tool/"Boot Sector Viewer" extract Linux boot record to a file)
and amend created loader's path to the extracted boot sector file. This method is clean as it does not include third party boot loaders!
With a boot sector loader in BCD you can also chain load plop* boot loader and create boot entries for USB, CD/DVD (without BIOS support!) and
chain loading grub4dos* boot loader you can create boot entries for almost anything boot able like ISO files, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X etc.
See Dual boot Win 7 and Linux/UNIX for details on creating boot sector loaders.
b) Windows 7 recovery - on a DELL Notebook boot to Windows 7 recovery using UEFI booting was not possible unless CSM was enabled.
Create and start safe mode loader in Windows 8.1/7/Vista
Using BootNext tool you can create with simple selection and click a safe mode loader(with or without boot menu entry) for Windows 8.1/7/Vista.
Available safe modes for selection are:
- Safe mode (minimal)
- Safe mode with alternate shell (command prompt)
- Safe mode with networking
For booting in safe mode you select the created safe mode loader and click on "Boot selected" button.
BootNext tool has also following functions:
- Boot to UEFI firmware setup
- System shut down
- Help
Last but not least the program displays such helpful information as:
- Boot device partition
- OS device partition
- Firmware type - BIOS or UEFI
- Secure boot setting
See also BootNext help for details.
License
Free for home, non-profit use.
Program cannot be hosted on other sites !
Installation
No installation - just place the two files extracted from zip in any (empty) directory. On run the program creates a desktop shortcut to itself.
Download
Download will be available for blog members only.
Prerequisites
.Net Framework 2.0 or 4.0. Tool runs on Vista or later.
*You can download plop from https://www.plop.at
grub4dos from http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/
