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.

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/