Official Home of BootZilla

BootZilla has been developed over the course of the past 4 years. In that time, hundreds of hours of work have been put towards making the best fit toolkit for most computer users.

In November 2004, I took over the project from a coworker, who for the previous 3 years, had managed a folder with a bunch of useful utilities for repairing various computer problems. (Bootzilla was named after the Bootsy Collins Song of the same name. BootZilla is not affiliated with BootZilla Productions, or Bootsy Collins in any other way).

In April of 2005, I decided to make BootZilla, then named “BencHToolz”, into a publicly available project. Versions 1.0 thru 1.2 were released during this time period, to a small bittorrent community. At around the same time, I managed a smaller form of the toolkit, called “BencHToolz Lite”, which ended up becoming the most popular version of the toolkit at the time.

In May of 2005, I began work on version 1.80, then codenamed “BHT Modules”.

By November 2005, I had released BHT 1.80. This version was the longest supported version available (up until now), with updates ranging from November 2005 thru May 2006. During the downtime, several re-writes were in progress for the eventual v2.0 release.

Version 2.0 of BHT (a shortened form of BencHToolz) was released and supported up thru version 2.6 from May 2006 thru September 2006. An early alpha-quality build of BHT v3.0 was released alongside BHT v2.9, in September 2006.

Version 2.0 and 3.0 had a common goal – to easily keep certain commonly updated components updateable from the client side, without the need for my server to be up to date.

BHT v3.0 was developed from September 2006 thru December 2006. Version 3.2.0 was released in January 2007, and offered a larger footprint. For the most part, I really don’t remember much about the 3.x version, aside from the fact that the scripting was more convoluted than any other version since, as it was a poorly constructed first-attempt.

During the majority of 2007, BootZilla v4.0.0 was developed. The entire BHTUpdate/BZUpdate script was re-written from the ground up. The whole compilation got more manageable, and easier to update. Overall, version 4.0 was my pride and joy, up until the 4.3 branch.

Version 4.0.0 was released on September 2007. Minor updates and changes to the code made way for v4.2.0, which was released in January 2008. The last version of 4.2 was released in April 2008.

Version 4.3.0 was developed from April 2008 thru July 2008, as an unstable development branch of the project. Most of the scripting was re-written in lieu of better scripting practices. Many of the changes made in v4.3.x were migrated over to the current v5.0 branch. Several code-resets occurred during the 4.3 phase of development. Also, v4.3 has had some of the longest stalled periods of development in the life of the project.

Version 5.0 was in development for what an  eternity. Snapshots were released as Alpha’s, Beta’s, and Release Candidates. Version 5.0 was scrapped and version 5.1 was re-written from a side project known as Codename BZ-mini. Version 5.1 was released on May 31st, 2009.

Version 5.2 was in development from late August 2009 thru October 7th, 2009. This version is considered a mandatory update for all users of previous editions, as it takes into mind the fact that bhtproject.org no longer hosts any files. BootCD functionality has been re-introduced with this version of BootZilla.

Version 5.3 is the current release.

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Versions after 5.3 will continue with updated applications, and be released 2-3 times a year.

The next major milestone, without re-working the current Batch-file based script is verison 6.0. I hope to move on to a LiveCD-style system, but that’s not definite yet. Nothing at this point in time is definite for 6.0 – I’m not sure if I’ll be scripting any part of it, or whether it’ll be completely GUI-driven, user-selectable, etc. For now, enjoy the version the project is currently up to.

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I hope you have enjoyed this history page, and learned about where the project came from, and where it may be headed in the future. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the Comments page.