The Ultimate Boot CD

For the past year or so, I have been using a magical bootable CD that enabled me to boot a computer into a working version of Windows XP so that I could recover files, run diagnostics or Ghost a hard drive to another machine.  What is this magical CD?

Well this magical CD is actually based upon Bart’s PE and is called the Ultimate Boot CD.  Bart’s has long been known for its utility rich boot disks and when Microsoft released its WinPE, Bart’s made it possible to give this PreInstallation environment to the masses.

Like the Microsoft WinPE, Bart’s runs a full version of Windows, apart from the fact that also comes with a whole stash of utilities and built in network ability which make it a far more powerful tool than WinPE.  If you hadn’t already guessed, WinPE is only available to Corporate Microsoft customers.  Bart’s PE on the other hand is free and requires that you have a licenced version of Windows and a Windows installation CD.

You can read more about Bart’s PE by using the link at the end of this page.

Now then, about this Ultimate CD.  It is in fact an add on to Bart’s, it extends the number of programs that are available and also has support for a much wider range of hardware thanks to its driver base.  The Ultimate CD is packed with utilities for resetting the local administrators password (useful for those machines where someone else has installed it and no one knows the password).  Disk imaging and recovery tools, backup tools, Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, Internet Browsing, CD Burning, Defrag, Security Data Wipe, Registry and stress testing.

The CD is very easy to build and you can easily add additional software to the CD to make it even more powerful.  For example if you use Ghost, you can add this too.  Then boot from the CD and connect to a GhostCast session over the network – so no more searching for DOS network card drivers.

The CD is so useful that I would recommend that every technician makes one and keeps in there CD pack.  They could even give teachers a copy, so that they are able to diagnose problems with their home machine before bringing it into school for you to look at.

So where can you learn more about this Ultimate Boot CD for Windows?  Easiest answer is to use the link below.

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows – http://www.ubcd4win.com/
Bart’s PE – http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/