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.

 

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

 

 

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.

 

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.
To uninstall just delete the program(bootnext.exe) and configuration file(bootnext.exe.config)

 

Download

Download will be available for blog members only.

Download BootNext utility

 

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/

 

 

It takes some time and effort to code apps and maintain a website, and liters of coffee ;)