Author Archives: admin

BootZilla version 6 - Open Beta

Posted by on January 29, 2012 7 comments

Today I am releasing BootZilla version 6 Beta! Check out the description for instructions on how to use it. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but it will soon be ready to go. Currently, I hope to finish before March of this year, possibly pushing for a Valentines Day release!

Note: You will need the Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0 in order to build BootZilla.

Description:

First beta release of BootZilla 6. Extract to a directory, and run “BZUpdate” from the ketarin directory. Once Ketarin opens up, click the button labelled “Update All”. This will download, and extract all the tools that BootZilla contains into the appropriate directories.

Currently, there appears to be an issue with pre-existing directories, which results in newer binaries not being extracted to the pre-existing directory.

Download the BootZilla Beta (48) Now!

SOPA and PIPA

Posted by on December 26, 2011 No comments

In regards to the SOPA and PIPA bills currently in congress and the senate, I’ve begun moving my registration of all bootzilla-related domains from GoDaddy over to NameCheap. As such, a simple whois query will now show the NameCheap whois protection as the owner of the bootzilla.org domain. This shouldn’t matter to the end user, but I suppose that it could confuse some people that are security-conscience, and want to know what’s going on beyond the bootzilla project.

As for the project, I’ll be building a new PC over the next week or two, and development will continue from where I left off a few weeks ago. BootZilla v6 has been tested on a few ‘other’ systems, to ensure that it works properly on all pc’s and Windows OS’s - Windows 2k through 8 are supported for building and maintaining, with unsupported functionality on Win9x as well.

Re-versioning and development discussion

Posted by on November 27, 2011 1 comment

BootZilla v5.x is dead and gone. Development on that beast was boring, buggy, and ugly. Today we are announcing the next iteration of the toolkit.

BootZilla version 6 will be the Major release.
It’s a complete re-write. There’s no old, crap-tastic code to be found here. Everything is minimalistic in nature, and is a whole lot faster. Building the entire package takes only a couple minutes, whereas it could have taken a full 45 minutes before. This version is about Speed, speed, speed, and versatility. Gone are the days of having downloads fail, and getting cryptic messages without proper logging.

The only con, if it can even be considered a con, is that the .NET Framework 2.0 is required. At this point in time, most people are using either Windows Vista or Windows 7, which both include .NET 2.0 as a component of the operating system. Only XP and 2000 users need to be aware of this dependency that BootZilla 6 has. Everything else is pre-packaged, and requires no additional utilities to function.

Technical details -

At this point in development, the essential tools have already been picked out, and now the only decision left is to decide on using just 7zip as the decompressor, or to use Universal Extractor (see www.legroom.net) as a helper application that covers anything I can throw at it (its getting more and more obvious to myself that I’ll use the latter). After this decision, the code for extracting files and folders needs to be implemented, but that’s all behind the scenes, and not something that the average user will ever know is coded by hand. That’s the beauty of BZ6 - no longer will there be a bunch of command prompt windows, bothering you while you try to do work and update BZ in the background. The only script included is used to get the latest database for the download application, (using wget for now) and then launching Ketarin with the latest database file. There’s simple logic in the script to keep bad things from happening, proper commenting for each function, and even proper administrator elevation information for users of Vista and 7.

Version 6 came about due to use of the toolkit in an environment where speed is of the essence, and efficiency is a required element to be successful.

As of today, the 27th of November 2011, development is closer to finished than it has been for over a year, or more, considering that the last ‘final’ version that can honestly be considered worthy of such a title, was released.

Support BootZilla

Posted by on November 27, 2011 No comments

Want to help support BootZilla’s development? Check out this deal -

I’ve been using HostGator for years now, as a website hosting provider and general file hosting, and have only good things to say about the company. As such, they’re offering a nice deal for people looking for ridiculous pricing on some of their services, for the so-called Cyber-Monday, which ends up being tomorrow.

Here’s the breakdown on pricing - All are priced PER MONTH

Shared hosting: As low as $4.95 — Now only: $2.48

Reseller Hosting: As low as $24.95 — Now Only: $12.48

VPS Hosting: As low as $19.95 — Now Only: $9.98

Dedicated Servers: As low as $174 — Now Only $87

The really awesome thing is that there’s no need to enter any coupon codes - just click the banner I have for HostGator, and you’ll be eligible for the reduced pricing, from 12AM CST (GMT-6) till 11:59PM CST on 11/28/11.

 

September 2011 Update

Posted by on September 18, 2011 No comments

Work has been slowly progressing on version 5.whatever, with more emphasis on moving on to a WindowsPE-based system, because a lot of the current infections are nastier than ever - a bootable cleanup utility is more viable these days than the standard ‘install mbam, run scan, remove infections’. Those days are somewhat over. In the past month, I’ve seen probably about 10 MBR rootkits, on about 1/4th the systems I’ve serviced, along with other nasty infections that needed HDD removal in order to clean the system (scanning the hdd in another system). A boot cd would circumvent these sorts of problems.

I’ve removed the bitcoin generation thingy. It didn’t make any monetary sense - at this point, with the value of the BTC down to around $4.80-5.10 USD, the fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a cent that the site has been generating is just not worth it. This should stop alienating users of the site.

News

Posted by on August 1, 2011 No comments

I’ve created two new redirects to this site, to make it easier to market and link to the site.

http://www.bootzilla.net & http://www.bootzilla.info  - Now point to BootZilla.org

—

BootZilla v5.6 is still in development, slowly, but surely. More news will come within the next week or two regarding the ETA for a final release.

 

BootZilla v5.6 Alpha in-progress

Posted by on July 16, 2011 No comments

If you want to take an early look at what’s in BZ v5.6, or want to get in on the ground floor, you can get the latest XML file for use with Ketarin.

At  the moment, all this does is grabs the latest apps into the proper folders, but does not perform any post-processing, such as decompression, or packaging into SFX’s, which is to come in the future revisions of the Alpha.

This is finally starting to come together - now all that’s needed is the post process stuff, and BZ 5.6 will be ready to go.

Download

News News News

Posted by on June 20, 2011 No comments

The Bad News:

If you’re prompted by your web browser or JAVA if you’d like to run an application that this site is hosting, you can say yes or no - it’s just an idea I’ve decided to try and help provide funding for the site via the plausibly doomed BitCoin currency. If you find your CPU at 100% while on this page, this is why - I’m using your computer indirectly to generate revenue for the site. Once you leave the site, it will stop running. Since no one has ever donated a single cent to this project, it just had to be tried, even if the backlash is to remove it entirely.

Enough of that, then, let’s go on with the good news:

Work has begun on BootZilla v5.6, which will be doing away with most of the old scripting in lieu of using Ketarin, a multipurpose application downloader, which can be setup to post-process the files it gets using external applications.

The only “downfall” is that BootZilla v5.6 will need .NET 2.0 to be installed. This shouldn’t be a problem for ANYONE. It’s 2011, and time for .NET to be the mainstream Windows platform to develop applications like Ketarin on.

Here’s the progress so far with Ketarin in use, setup with a small selection of the tools found in bootzilla:


Screenshot showing development progress of BootZilla v5.6

So far, the downloader has been tested, and found to work beautifully as a replacement for BZUpdate and Wget, which is excellent, as it should resolve a lot of problems that have been the bane of BootZilla’s existence for a while now.

Version 5.99/6.0 has also begun development, firstly as a small addon to Windows PE 2.0/2.1/3.0, which will probably be migrated into a WinBuilder project later on during its development.

The Future

Posted by on June 19, 2011 No comments

I’ve been testing and using other tools out there, many like BootZilla, but a bit more polished, in some ways. I’m working on restructuring the entirety of the suite, wiping out most of the old batch scripting in lieu of a cleaner, more versatile solution. First things first, thanks to Foolish IT, I’ve been made aware of a neat .NET application that works as an updater for software apps, much like a combination of curl and wget, in a neat gui-based solution. Foolish IT also offers a neat tool named <b>D7</b>, which offers a lot of the same tools as BZ, in a simple GUI, instead of an HTML file. I’ve been testing it with a lot of systems lately, and have found that it can be used as a great replacement to my ancient html page launcher. I’ve also been intrigued by FalconFour’s UBCD, which is based on Hiren’s boot CD, which contains a lot of licensed software, but is extremely useful in an IT tech’s job. I’m thinking of creating a completely legal, free alternative to F4′s CD, which happens to be the original idea for BootZilla v6.

Here we are at a crossroad of sorts. I can continue to develop the suite as an abortion of batch scripts, or I can jump ship and start working on the final, more useful WindowsPE-based version 6, which has been a long time in planning. It’s really gotten to the point where the basic toolset I’ve offered for years is not all too useful anymore - many infections prevent booting up a system, but if you can gain access to the registry from another system, you can fix the system - that’s where I’m going with this project.

To keep the users I have right now, I’ll be releasing BootZilla a legacy edition, which will stay in the version 5.x land, and a ‘future tech’ version, which will start with version 6.0. The legacy version may only see 1-2 updates a year, while the v6 release will see between 3-10 releases/patches a year, if need be.

BootZilla v5.5 Preview Release

Posted by on April 11, 2011 No comments

I’ve decided to finally update the files on the server to reflect that of my latest builds. The project will be updated a bit more frequently in the coming months, as version 5.5 has taken far too long to come out. The following new features are in this release:

  • Easily create BootCD’s using SARDU
  • More anti-rootkit tools included
  • Server-side automation for the latest versions of updatable components (Combofix, Malwarebytes rules, etc.)
  • Latest version of 7-zip and the LZMA2 format is used on all archives
  • Updated Autorun app with larger screen space
  • Slighly re-tooled to better suit the primary purpose of helping remove virus infections

This release has spent quite some time in development, but for good reason - it finally has a universal boot cd creating utility, which means no more “Checksum is invalid” errors when trying to build a boot cd. Not only that, but you can easily create a bootable USB drive with all the tools included in BootZilla, and whatever other tools you choose from SARDU’s list of useable utilities. (And there are a LOT of them).

This will be considered a preview release, as there may be bugs. I do not have enough time to check every single bit of the compilation out at this time, but would like to get as much feedback and error reports as possible, to help build on this release towards 5.6.

Download Links:

BootZilla v5.5 Builder: BootZilla v5.5 Preview Release (3940) (~4MB, Zipped)

How To Use:

Extract this ZIP file to a directory on your computer (If you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7, the best place is under your user name, in a directory called BZ). Once the archive is fully extracted, double-click on BZUpdate, and follow the menu prompts. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you may have to right-click on BZUpdate, and select “Run As Administrator”. Make sure you are online, or the builder will fail to build BootZilla. If you have any issues running BZUpdate, please comment on the Downloads page.