_________ SWAT MAGAZINE ISSUE THIRTY TWO AUGUST 2000 __________ / \___________________________________________/ \ / --==:V Communications Inc. System Commander 2000 - Review:==-- \ / by SiliconFuRy \ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- What is System Commander?? At its simplest, System Commander is a powerful utility to manage multiple Operating Systems on the one system. It includes a boot menu which is installed into the MBR, and can even be restored to its original state, like if you already had a LILO configuration. The Boot Menu. After installing and enabling System Commander, when you reboot, you'll be presented with a rather fetching boot menu, with a list of Operating System configurations to boot. It even includes a Command-Line Windows98 configuration to help prevent having to hit Ctrl just as you exit the menu. Each of the boot configurations and be tweaked by pressing Alt+S when in the boot menu. Here you can change that annoying sound it makes when it starts, as well as other things, like the usual Boot Defaults and Timeouts, as well as what partitions are (in)visible to the specified boot setup. The real genius that makes this utility excel is what happens when you press Alt+O in the boot menu... The OS-Wizard. This Program looks rather disgustingly like a fresh install of Win95 at 640x480. But the Win95 interface really makes this part of the suite really easy to use. Use the Start menu to start the core Os-Wizard, and prepare your system for installing a new OS, from a variety of Unices to Windows 2000. This process ingeniuosly sets up partitions on your hard disks for installing your new OS. Alternatively, you can use the OS-Wizard's built-in partition manager to create, delete, move, copy and even resize disk partitions. It even has a NTFS and compressed NTFS to FAT16 or FAT32 converter. Other Stuff. The suite includes a feature to backup your OS boot files, for instance in DOS, files like MSDOS.sys, CONFIG.sys and AUTOEXEC.bat can be backed up in its own folder, just in case you bugger up somewhere along the line. You can also create boot diskettes in case the MBR really buggers up and is unbootable. The boot menu can be temporarily disabled, so you can install a new OS manually and not have to bother about mucking up your current System Commander MBR. The Backstep Wizard allows you to undo all operations done after installing an OS, in case it really did bugger up, or you don't want it. You can even undo Partition Delete and Format procedures! Conclusion. This great utility lacks little, and is great if you want to setup more than 1 Operating Sytem on your machine and don't want to fuss too much with unsightly partition utilities like FDISK or DISK-DRUID. A program definetly worth-getting. It is available from your nearest PC Store for about £49,99, or your nearest good underground Warez site. At this time of writing, System Commander 2000 is available from: If you get an error 500 or similiar, keep retrying, its just JustOn being its usual crap self. A lite version of this is available with the Current PCPlus issue, #168, Autumn 2000, but this version is pretty darned crap because it only supports OS's on 1HDD and limited partitioning. Shouts to: All of the WeeD CreW, and our regulars on irc.digital-delusion.net 6667 #WeeD