Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

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Midas
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Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

#1 Post by Midas »

This should be posted somewhere in TPFC's forums for ready retrieval.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/files/ wrote:Grub2Win is a tool that lets you boot grub2 from your PC's EFI firmware or MBR. It supports Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista and XP. Download this simple Windows program and instructions that help you get grub2 booting quickly. Grub2 supports extremely large disks (over 4 TB) and GPT partitions allowing you to have many OS images on a single physical disk drive. Grub2 also supports search, advanced scripting and many partition types. Supported filesystems include Btrfs, ext4, ext3, ext2, NTFS, FAT and Mac HFS+. Booting from CD and USB is also supported by Grub2.
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Grub2Win latest release (currently v7.8.6, dated 2016-09-16) can be downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/files/.

Older GRUB4DOS appears to be not UEFI capable, but is still being developed(?).

https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/ wrote:GRUB4DOS is an universal boot loader based on GNU GRUB. It can boot off DOS/LINUX, or via Windows boot manager/syslinux/lilo, or from MBR/CD. It also has builtin BIOS disk emulation, ATAPI CDROM driver, etc.
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GRUB4DOS latest stable release (v0.4.4-2009-06-20) can be downloaded from http://download.gna.org/grub4dos/.

When using GRUB4DOS, utilities like these might be handy:
Freemium EasyBCD shoul also be mentioned, since it's rather well-known and widely used (latest version is currently v2.3.0.207, dated 2015-10-20): info and downloads are at http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/.

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SYSTEM
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Re: Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

#2 Post by SYSTEM »

Midas wrote: Older GRUB4DOS appears to be not UEFI capable, but is still being developed(?).
Hard to say if it's still being developed or not. The latest commit was made on August 15: https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/commits/0.4.6a
Midas wrote: GRUB4DOS latest stable release (v0.4.4-2009-06-20) can be downloaded from http://download.gna.org/grub4dos/.
The latest stable release is 0.4.5c-2014-01-17, available in https://code.google.com/archive/p/grub4 ... /downloads.
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Midas
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Re: Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

#3 Post by Midas »

Thanks for that, SYSTEM -- your input is highly appreciated. 8)

I merely indicated the stable version present in the alleged official page download repository, but I believe that yours is in fact the correct one.

BTW, one more related utility is Boyans DotNET (v2.0/4.0) BootNext tool -- limited to booting partitions that are already present.
https://www.boyans.net/bootnext/bootnext.html wrote:BootNext is a small but powerful system tool developed for Windows 8.1/7/Vista operating system.
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The site download is currently not available -- but you might be able to find it if you google for it (just don't forget to submit to VirusTotal before running it).

Lastly an excellent launchpad for everything multi-boot is http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ (generally disregard the many mentions to Windows Vista on account of most info being current for Windows 7, at least).

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Re: Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

#4 Post by donald »

Midas wrote:Lastly an excellent launchpad for everything multi-boot is http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ (generally disregard the many mentions to Windows Vista on account of most info being current for Windows 7, at least).
try new address http://www.multibooters.com/

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Midas
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Re: Bootloader utilities for non-Windows OSes

#5 Post by Midas »

Quick update for a related GRUB2 tutorial (for non-Windows systems) I found quite clear and informative:
Normally you need to create a live DVD or live USB in order to boot Linux ISO images. You can do it with graphical tools or from the command line. But what if you don't have an optical disk or USB thumb drive around, or your computer does not support burning ISO images to an optical disk?

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