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Comparison of bootloaders

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.10.142.29 (talk) at 15:57, 11 June 2007 (Features: I know for a fact that SMB can boot any partition on either HDD). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of available bootloaders.

Features

Name License It can reside in Boot from Can boot
MBR[1] only MBR[1] / VBR[2] Floppy Hard Disk Second Hard Disk Logical partitions CD-ROM[3] Floppy USB[3] ZIP[3] LAN[3] MS-DOS Windows 9x/ME Windows NT series Windows Vista Linux ReactOS MenuetOS
Acronis OS Selector ? ? ? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes Yes No Yes ? ?
Boot Camp ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
BootIt Next Generation ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
bootman ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
BootX ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Das U-Boot ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
GAG Open source (abandoned) Yes ? Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes ? ? ? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
GRUB ? No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes ? Yes ? ?
Gujin ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
LILO ? No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes Yes ? Yes ? ?
loadlin ? ? ? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? ? ? Yes ? ?
Madboot ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
MasterBooter ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
NTLDR ? No Yes Yes Yes ? ? No Yes Yes ? ? Yes Yes Yes No ? ? ?
OSL2000 Boot Manager Freeware[4]/Shareware Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ?
Smart Boot Manager Open source Yes No Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes ? ? ? ? Yes ? ? ? ? ?
Syslinux ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
XOSL ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
zBoot Manager ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Windows Boot Manager ? ? Yes ? Yes Yes ? Yes Yes ? Yes ? ? Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ?

Notes

  1. ^ a b Master Boot Record
  2. ^ Volume Boot Record
  3. ^ a b c d Without BIOS support
  4. ^ There isn't any feature limit for the free version, only a small "UNREGISTERED" text and a nag screen after some time.