January 19th, 2006
Can’t Boot? Try the Free Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Earlier David wrote an article about 3 great free Windows utilities. Those are all great, but they require one thing … a bootable PC. What happens if you can’t boot your PC, but have data you absolutely must get off it? Enter the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win).
The UBCD4Win is free … except for one part … more on that, later. The Author of the project is Benjamin Burrows. I would say the daunting part of this utility is that it must be built. You can download all the free parts here, but because of the non-free part, he can’t provide an ISO image to download or anything. You have to build it yourself.
What is the non-free part? Windows, of course. When you’re doing building this, you’ll have a boot CD that will access NTFS volumes, login to your network (assuming the drivers are available for your hardware), browse the Internet, scan for viruses, backup your hard drive … all with a nice GUI. Honestly, the site has step-by-step instructions on building, and once you’ve done it one time, it’s easy (oh, all right … pretty easy). The main package is updated quite often (just yesterday, in fact) as are the driver packages.
We Say: Only for emergencies, but very handy. I had one hard drive fail on me, and although I had an image of it, there were files that had changed since that image was made. I used UBCD4Win, moved those files onto a network drive, put the new hard drive in, reinstalled the old image, copied the files over from the network … in about an hour. I also used one of the utilities when a friend was having trouble converting a cheap Linux PC he bought to Windows (see my story on it here). If you try this, and like it, don’t forget to donate!
Martin says:
Don’t forget the other Ultimate Boot CD
http://ultimatebootcd.com/
January 19th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Michael Santo says:
Yeah, Martin, I used to use that, but since I found the UBCD4Win, I’ve never used it again. The GUI, etc. makes it much easier to use.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Martin says:
I alway keep both handy. The original (UBCD) is very handy when you have a cranky Windows system that isn’t XP. I run into a decent amout of Win 98 systems. The diagnostic tools are convenient too.
January 19th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Stephen Roberts says:
This is why I keep a Live Linux CD on hand. You don’t have to build it, it is free, and I have yet to find a machine that it wont work on. And when I am done, my customers want one too!
January 19th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
David Johnston says:
I use the Ultimate Boot CD, the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, and Linux Live CD’s. Why use one when you can have ‘em all!
…okay, now I’m sounding like a Pokemon commercial. I think I’m going to stop now
January 19th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
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Thank you! Good article.
January 20th, 2006 at 6:24 am
Computerworld Blogs says:
It’s got a ‘B’ in it! (and extra-defensive coding)
In today’s IT Blogwatch, we look at Google’s privacy spat with the US Government (noting that most people can’t spell subpoena). Not to mention an example of defensive programming taken to unnecessary extremes…
January 20th, 2006 at 6:27 am
Mikey says:
Jeez, what’s become of the phrase “staying on topic”?
I do not care about Google’s refusal to surrender records to the Feds. (I also know that there isn’t a damn thing that one can personally do to stop the “government” from looking intently in your direction…)
So why post th off-topic material? Break down and send it to the editors for inclusion as a new story/article. Don’t send it here to the comments page, we were talking about the Ultimate Boot CD.
In case you couldn’t find it:
http://www.realtechnews.com/submissions/
Now, pretend I didn’t scold you, AND GET BACK TO WORK.
January 20th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Benjamin Burrows says:
Thanks for the great article about the project, everyone appreciates it!
I just wanted to post some “news” so users wouldn’t be discouraged. Currently there are a few minor issues with the driver packages as BPE 3.1.9 reads driver files a little differently now. We have a fix posted in our forum and hope to release a new version (1.7) of the driver pack soon.
Also, I please ask you to stay “tuned.” As we have a lot of exciting changes planned for the 3.0 release of the project!!
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