EasyBCD

Supported operating systems

EasyBCD runs on Windows and modifies the Boot Configuration Data to support other operating systems. Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP are handled by handing off boot control to NTLDR or the EasyBCD-specific EasyLDR, which bypasses NTLDR. MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x are chainloaded via modified IO.sys and the Windows 9x boot sector. Linux and BSD are loaded by handing off to GRUB or LILO, or by using EasyBCD's NeoGrub module based on GRUB4DOS. Mac OS X is loaded via the Darwin bootloader, and other operating systems are supported through chainloading their specific loader environments.

Features

EasyBCD provides a range of bootloader-related features for repair and configuration. It also offers backup and restore of BCD configuration files for recovery and testing. EasyBCD can change the boot drive, rename or reorder bootloader entries, and modify existing entries to point to a different drive. Newer versions support creating bootable USB disks by deploying BOOTMGR and the BCD onto a removable disk, after which entries can be added or removed to create bootable repair USB sticks.

It also supports changing the boot partition or drive, setting the default boot entry, reordering menu entries, and modifying the boot menu timeout. EasyBCD can install and configure entries for MS-DOS 6.x, Windows 95-ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, and Windows 11. Depending on the Windows version added, options may include enabling support for unsigned drivers on 64-bit installations, booting into safe mode variants, limiting memory or CPU cores, verbose boot logging, and enabling or disabling PAE and DEP/NoExecute.