Topic Title

Greetings Forummers,

I want to pass along some important info, that might possibly help you out of a jam, if your computer is malfunctioning or if Windows is not booting -- or, for other reasons, you may not *want* to boot Windows.

The first one is called the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can download the .ISO file here:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

You should also download the utility called BurnCDCC from the FAQ page:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/faq.html

...that lets you easily burn the .ISO file onto a CD-ROM. This UBCD disk has many diagnostic tools, hard drive utilities, and is quite useful for many things, like finding out if you have bad RAM, or fixing the Master Boot Record on a hard drive.

The "Basic" version of UBCD is around 125MB -- a big download to be sure, but once you have it...

The second is a bootable Linux CD-ROM .ISO file, called Knoppix:

http://www.knoppix.org/

You can use the same BurnCDCC utility for this one, too.

What is Knoppix? It is a fully bootable Linux with a KDE (GUI interface), that will let you browse the Internet, browse your network (probably), and has lots of software, like CD/DVD burning -- to recover data from a hard drive that is either not bootable, or is infected with a virus/Trojan malware program. It also has OpenOffice, which will let you open, edit, and save MS Office documents.

Or, at the very least, if you are curious about Linux, you can try booting from the CD-ROM, and try it at no risk to your Windows boot -- it doesn't use the hard drive for booting. It can read -- but *not* *write* to NTFS drives. Linux/KDE is both familiar and yet weird at the same time to us Windows users.

Knoppix is a HUGE download -- about 710MB, but it is an entire operating system, and loads of other software, too. Both the Ultimate Boot CD, and Knoppix have been very useful to me in the past week, helped me diagnose and solve a rather nasty & sticky situation...but it is all better now.

I've used Knoppix and find it very useful, be aware that older computers may not allow you to boot form the cd drive first. You can check this option by looking in your computer bios (usually done by hitting the del key during boot up). In one of the menu selection there will be an option for boot order, where you tell the computer where to look first, second, third, etc for boot-up devices. Make sure the cd drive is selected *before* the hard drive.

I also understand that there are bootable usb drives out there that will also do similar things, but I have not tried any of these yet.

Well, but look also at:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
It is free. But it is a little work to build a own CD.
It is a little Windows XP. Bootable with a lot of plugins (virusscan, scandisk etc.)

Another commercial is Erd Commander from Winternals.
http://www.winternals.com/products/repa ... er2002.asp
No work, CD is ready.
Better than Barts Pe Builder but commercial.
Repair easy a defective Windows. Change Administrator password, edit registry etc.

But first install on all Win W2K/XP first the recovery console. This is the basic for the first help with a non booting windows. But it is all in Dos mode.

Martell