Updating HBCDMenu Applications - The Beginning

OK, so you have your nice new Bootable Flash Drive (Created in previous post), but Hiren seems to have left out an important feature in many of the programs located in the HBCDMenu. That is there is no way to easily update the applications if they become outdated and no longer work as well as they should.
Or so it seems. This post will explain the workings of the HBCDMenu thus allowing you to update the underlying application or even add your very own applications.

How does it work?

I'm sure you have wondered, as many others have the past, how does the HBCDMenu work? Well its quite simple actually, the program simply creates the "Programs" menu by using a .csv file located in the "/HBCD/Programs" directory.

How do I Edit it?

What if you want to edit the menu, maybe add your own applications or scripts or maybe clean it up a bit and get rid of all of the extra stuff that you will never use.Well Hiren has given you the facility within the HBCDMenu program to do so. This is done simply by opening the menu and selecting "Help > Edit Menu > Windows HBCDMenu.csv" as shown to the right. In a later post I will be explaining how Hiren has created this menu file and how we can create our own "Personalized" version.
So, once we have opened up the HBCDMenu.csv file we just need to decrypt how it works.
The file will be opened using the "Spread32" program which is included within the HBCD programs and will contain all of the current entries.
The key elements in this file are as follows:

• First Cell in Column - The top cell in every column will define the name of a root level menu.
• Set of Two Cells - Everything under the top cell needs to be in a set of two.
• Title of the program or script - This can be anything you wish (Good idea is something that describes the program i.e. Program Title)
• Path to program or script - This is the path to the script or program that the item will run and is relative to the path of the HBCDMenu.csv file, meaning if you wish to run a script that is located in the "HBCD/Programs" directory then you will simply put "ScriptName.cmd" in this cell. (Remember you can go back one directory by adding "../" to the begining of your script name.)
• Backslash (\) - A backslash symbolises an additional drop-down menu within the "Programs" drop-down.
• Use a Double Ampersands (&&) for a & symbol - This is to do with the way that VB6.0 (The programming language) interprets the ampersands (&) symbol.

Things to remember.

Its always a good idea to zip up your programs and extract them to a temp folder on-the-fly using a batch file. This is good because, it will compress the programs to save valuable and limited space on your flash drive as well as allow you to disconnect your flash drive with no issues when it has been extracted.
I will explain the complete process of adding a new program to the menu in my next post. But if you cannot wait I recommend using one of the existing .cmd files in the "HBCD/Programs" folder as an example.