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July 14, 2006

VistaBootPRO 2.0 - BCD Edit Made Easy

PROnetworks today released VistaBootPRO 2.0 Beta to the public, and with already over 25,000 dowloads of VistaBootPRO 1.0, it is sure to be well received. As the Vice Officer in charge of Applications here on PRO, I had the great pleasure of working closely with the Betas team in the development and testing of this application.

Windows Vista has introduced the BCD store as a new bootloader which replaces the old ntldr and boot.ini files which were used by Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. Unfortunately, before VistaBootPRO, the only way to manage this new bootloader was through the command line tool bcdedit.exe. This tool requires complex commands (at least complex to the average user), and is not very user friendly. The Betas team on PRO has put together a great application written with Microsoft C# which provides a user friendly GUI (Graphic User Interface). The program has the ability to manage boot entries, rename them from the default 'Microsoft Windows' which the Vista Beta's use, set the default OS, and even add and remove Vista and legacy OS entries. In addition, VistaBootPRO 2.0 adds a number of advanced features which the power users will love. Also included is the ability to remove or replace the Vista Bootloader in case of a problem, or if a user wants to revert back to an earlier operating system boot environment like XP. This compact application makes managing the BCD easy for the average user, and because it actually uses bcdedit to accomplish most of the commands, it is fully compatible with Vista. This is one of the first true third party Vista software applications to be released.

Working behind the scenes with the Betas Team is always exciting, and developing a new application, for use on a new operating system is challenging and rewarding. We spent a lot of time on developement and testing, and the great thing about a working in a team environment is that you can test scenarios on a variety of hardware configurations and really put an application through its paces. Having 5 or more operating systems installed at any one time is no big thing to a Beta tester and we have all learned to keep our installation media handy for another fresh install at any time.

Windows Vista has gone through many stages over its development cycle and with Vista Beta 2, and Build 5456 we have seen some great additional features. Build 5472, 5490, who really knows what will be the next release. Of course when a new build is released, everyone wants to see the screenshots and read the reviews before they install it themselves. Now, with VistaBootPRO 2.0, running these Beta versions of Windows Vista will hopefully be a good bit easier for those who choose to be on the cutting edge.

Posted by jrfree1 at July 14, 2006 09:21 AM