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.