MBR Boot Manager

Simple yet powerful Master Boot Record Boot manager that allows to select one of four primary partitions during the boot. Got tired with reinstalling Grub or other boot manager, that was overwritten by Windows? Now you can choose one of four primary partitions to boot with this tiny (512 bytes only) custom MBR.

Features

• Windows, Linux, FreeDOS and any other bootable partitions are supported
• Speeds up the boot process for your main OS
• Supports multiple active partitions
• Boot first active partition by default
• If Shift is pressed during boot, a boot menu will appear
  • Use UP and DOWN arrows to choose partition in boot menu
  • Use Enter to select the partition you want to boot from
  • Use Esc to reboot your computer
• Easy to install
• Uses only the first sector of disk (512 bytes)
• Absolutely free and open-source
• Well-documented and optimised code
• DIY: compile your own version with NASM

Installation

Windows

Download BootIce and run as Administrator. Select the disk, then Process MBR -> Restore MBR. Choose mbr.bin as restore file, make sure that "Keep signature and partition table untouched" is selected and choose "Restore".

Linux/Unix

Create a backup of your current MBR with dd if=/dev/sdX of=mbr_backup.bin bs=512 count=1.
Then run dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1 where X is a letter of the disk

Credits

• Egor Makarenko
• Andrew Plotnikov
• Vladislav Zemtsov

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. See our LICENSE file for more information.