Ultimate Boot CD instructions needed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael T.
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael T.

A local radio program here in SoCal had a computer guy on that seemed very
knowledgeable.

One caller could not get his Windows XP computer to boot, so it was
recommended that he try Ultimate Boot CD.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I'm a retired software engineer, so I am seldom stumped by new software. But
I have to confess I thought the absence of any kind of "Getting Started"
section left me ill equipped to use this tool.

I checked their FAQ, but no joy.

I also posted a question on their forum, but it looks like this forum is
somewhat inactive with few posts recently.

Does anyone know what the first few steps are? I know I need to create and
ISO image of my hard drive (or part of my hard drive). But I cannot
determine how that is done. <head scratch>

Tia.

Michael
 
A local radio program here in SoCal had a computer guy on that
seemed very knowledgeable.

One caller could not get his Windows XP computer to boot, so it
was recommended that he try Ultimate Boot CD.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I'm a retired software engineer, so I am seldom stumped by new
software. But I have to confess I thought the absence of any kind
of "Getting Started" section left me ill equipped to use this
tool.

I checked their FAQ, but no joy.

I also posted a question on their forum, but it looks like this
forum is somewhat inactive with few posts recently.

Does anyone know what the first few steps are? I know I need to
create and ISO image of my hard drive (or part of my hard drive).
But I cannot determine how that is done. <head scratch>
Click to expand...

It's not clear to me what you're asking. If it's how to make the disk,
you just download the .ISO file, and use that image to create a CD-R,
using Nero or other competent burning program.

After that, you should be able to boot up with the CD and use any of
the utilities on it. If you need instructions on the various utilities,
you will need to research them separately. The disk is just a
collection of programs compiled for your convenience. The guy who put
the CD together doesn't support the utilities directly.

Did you read the FAQ page on the site?
 
Michael T. said:
A local radio program here in SoCal had a computer guy on that seemed very knowledgeable.

One caller could not get his Windows XP computer to boot, so it was recommended that he try Ultimate Boot CD.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I'm a retired software engineer, so I am seldom stumped by new software. But I have to confess I thought the absence
of any kind of "Getting Started" section left me ill equipped to use this tool.

I checked their FAQ, but no joy.

I also posted a question on their forum, but it looks like this forum is somewhat inactive with few posts recently.

Does anyone know what the first few steps are? I know I need to create and ISO image of my hard drive (or part of my
hard drive). But I cannot determine how that is done. <head scratch>

Tia.

Michael
Click to expand...

The first step is to download the UBCD ISO and create a bootable CD with it. Once it's created, you can boot from it,
and there are a number of programs on it (all of the ones listed at the bottom of their page). I don't know why you
would need to create an ISO of your hard drive, unless you're doing so as a backup. Or are you asking about customizing
the UBCD4Win? If so, the tutorial is here: http://www.ubcd4win.com/slipstream.htm .
 
Michael said:
A local radio program here in SoCal had a computer guy on that seemed very
knowledgeable.

One caller could not get his Windows XP computer to boot, so it was
recommended that he try Ultimate Boot CD.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I'm a retired software engineer, so I am seldom stumped by new software. But
I have to confess I thought the absence of any kind of "Getting Started"
section left me ill equipped to use this tool.

I checked their FAQ, but no joy.

I also posted a question on their forum, but it looks like this forum is
somewhat inactive with few posts recently.

Does anyone know what the first few steps are? I know I need to create and
ISO image of my hard drive (or part of my hard drive). But I cannot
determine how that is done. <head scratch>

Tia.

Michael
Click to expand...

You start with Wikipedia, when the originating site doesn't explain how it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boot_CD_for_Windows

"It is based on BartPE"

BartPE is a tool for converting a Windows install CD, into a preboot environment,
allowing the execution of Windows executables. BartPE is kinda a pain, as
every time you add a tool to it, you're effectively remastering the CD. When
I built a BartPE boot CD for myself, I tested it in a VM as I added tools
one at a time. (That way, I'm not burning and wasting blank CDs. I boot the VM
with the CD, then see whether it works or not, like a sandbox.) Eventually,
I had enough stuff in it, that I burned a real CD. It still isn't that convenient,
as I find the next time I go to use it, there is some tool I forgot to add.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

"A BartPE system image is created using PE Builder

It requires a legal copy of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 [i.e. installer CD]

Additional applications can be included in the image using plugins."

So as far as I know, UBCD is a BartPE disc, with a particular set of
plugins.

One of the things I put on my BartPE disc, was a plugin for NTBackup. But
I can't remember now, exactly why that was important. It could be a way
of allowing me to do a backup or restore, without Windows running, but I
don't really remember the details now, as to why I did it. In any case,
I had to search around the web a bit, to find that particular plugin.
And that's the nature of building your own BartPE disc from scratch.
Vetting plugins before including them, and so on.

Some third-party software developers, will also give you for free, a BartPE
plugin. For example, say I buy XYZ software program for $100. Then they may
include, at no additional cost, a plugin for BartPE, making the licensed
software "portable". In this case, it would be a way of making a recovery
CD for doing a "bare metal restore" of a backup.

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50035.aspx

That's the basic attraction of doing this stuff.

Paul
 
SC Tom said:
The first step is to download the UBCD ISO and create a bootable CD with
it. Once it's created, you can boot from it, and there are a number of
programs on it (all of the ones listed at the bottom of their page). I
don't know why you would need to create an ISO of your hard drive, unless
you're doing so as a backup. Or are you asking about customizing the
UBCD4Win? If so, the tutorial is here:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/slipstream.htm .
Click to expand...

Thanks Tom, as well as the others that replied so promptly.

I encountered a lot of issues in my 35 years as a software engineer, but
unfortunately ISO files was not one of them.

It looks like my big issues was that I assumed (incorrectly it appears) that
the ISO file was something I created with UBCD. WRONG!

Apparently what I need to do after I download UBCD 5.1.1 (for the third
time) is also download an ISO file (not create one). Not sure where to get
this file.

I did see mirror websites yesterday, but I cannot find them now. Plus I
checked 5 or 6 of these and it wasn't clear how to invoke a download.
 
Thanks Paul.

We seem to share a similar sense of humor. I enjoyed your comment about not
remembering why you did something.

I can totally relate - especially now that I am well into my 60s. :)

My biggest problem seems to be that I made some assumptions about ISO files
based on years of experience that may be bogus. Ah, the curse of thinking
you know more than you really do.

My next step (apparently) is to find an ISO file to download that is
compatible with UBCD. But I am not 100% certain this step isn't another bad
assumption.

Cheers.
 
Michael said:
Thanks Paul.

We seem to share a similar sense of humor. I enjoyed your comment about not
remembering why you did something.

I can totally relate - especially now that I am well into my 60s. :)

My biggest problem seems to be that I made some assumptions about ISO files
based on years of experience that may be bogus. Ah, the curse of thinking
you know more than you really do.

My next step (apparently) is to find an ISO file to download that is
compatible with UBCD. But I am not 100% certain this step isn't another bad
assumption.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I think UBCD comes as a finished product.

An ISO9660 file (blah.iso) is an "image" of a bootable CD, including whatever is
needed in the way of a boot sector. You take a CD burning program, that is familiar
with converting ISO9660 files into bootable media, and do the burning there.
An example would be the free program "Imgburn", or a program that comes with some
retail DVD burners such as Nero Lite. (The last two burners I bought, came with Nero,
but that's because it was a shopping criteria.)

(When I give a Wikipedia article for a free software program, it's to indicate
what the legit source of the software is. In this case "imgburn.com" is mentioned
in the upper right summary pane of this article. Some people, if I mention a free
software, they run off and find some "hell hole" to download from, and then complain
they got a "registry cleaner" instead :-) Even when you do find the source website,
it can be hard to find the proper download link, due to so many adverts being present.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgburn

This is not the same as "drag and drop" style burning. If you drop a 700MB blah.iso
file, onto the Windows builtin burning function, yes, it "copies" the file
to the CD, but then the CD is just a "data" CD. Programs like Imgburn, when
asked to properly process an ISO9660 file, they "take it apart" and do
what's appropriate. In the case of UBCD, you'll likely find afterwards,
there are hundreds of files visible on the CD when you browse it. And they're
the contents of the "image".

Paul
 
Michael T. said:
Thanks Paul.

We seem to share a similar sense of humor. I enjoyed your comment about not remembering why you did something.

I can totally relate - especially now that I am well into my 60s. :)

My biggest problem seems to be that I made some assumptions about ISO files based on years of experience that may be
bogus. Ah, the curse of thinking you know more than you really do.

My next step (apparently) is to find an ISO file to download that is compatible with UBCD. But I am not 100% certain
this step isn't another bad assumption.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

The ISO *is* UBCD, but not UBCD4Win. For that one, you need the XP installation disc (as Paul pointed out in his link to
Wikipedia). You can get both UBCD 5.1 and UBCD4WIN 3.60 here http://www.serverninjas.com/downloads

Once you have downloaded the UBCD ISO, you can use a program like ImgBurn to create the CD from the ISO
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download .

If you want the UBCD4WIN, download the setup file, then read the instructions here: http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

The difference between the two is the plain UBCD is the text-looking interface you see on the original page you went to,
and the 4WIN version boots into Windows XP, run from the CD. I like this version, only because I find it more familiar
and easier (for me) to use.
 
Hot-Text said:
Tom no XP Sp3 in that software and makes it out of date...

Maybe that SoCal, computer guy not that knowledgeable at all,
if he can not take the time to read a website, and ask the Caller is his computer is a SP1, 2, or 3.......
Click to expand...

That's why you have to use an XP installation CD. If you don't have one that's at SP2 or SP3, you can slipstream the
service pack into the original installation CD, creating a new XP SP3 installation CD and/or a folder on your work
drive. It's very simple, really. The instructions appear harder than the actual process itself. The folder with all of
the new files will be necessary to create the UBCD4WIN at whatever SP level you want to make it.
 
SC said:
The ISO *is* UBCD, but not UBCD4Win. For that one, you need the XP
installation disc (as Paul pointed out in his link to Wikipedia). You
can get both UBCD 5.1 and UBCD4WIN 3.60 here
http://www.serverninjas.com/downloads

Once you have downloaded the UBCD ISO, you can use a program like
ImgBurn to create the CD from the ISO
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download .

If you want the UBCD4WIN, download the setup file, then read the
instructions here: http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

The difference between the two is the plain UBCD is the text-looking
interface you see on the original page you went to, and the 4WIN version
boots into Windows XP, run from the CD. I like this version, only
because I find it more familiar and easier (for me) to use.
Click to expand...

I didn't know there was more than one of them.

This one has instructions like BartPE, only it has its own
list of plugins. I guess that's the value adder compared to BartPE.
This requires a Windows installer CD (for the tool to extract files from),
and the new CD is built from the Windows install files, plus plugins and
so on.

http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

I have a UBCD502.iso here, and that one appears to have multiple
options in it, and a GRUB4DOS directory. That's probably not built
using BartPE.

The only one I've played with, is the BartPE one. I downloaded
UBCD502.iso back in 2010, but it doesn't look like I did anything with
it. This is UBCD502.iso running in a VM.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8919/ubcd502.gif

This is BartPE running in a VM. The UBCD4Win may share something with this
(how it works), but the skinning could be different. I've never tried
UBCD4Win. Even trying BartPE was a stretch for me. It wasn't hard to
use, but I guess I'm just not a fan of cooking up new ISO files over
and over again. When I run the BartPE disc, I usually am doing things
from the Command Prompt window.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/9718/bartpe.gif

This is a picture I could find of a UBCD4Win running. Looks like
it's got a few more decorations than a BartPE.

http://www.bleepstatic.com/tutorials/driveimage-xml/ubcd4win-desktop.jpg

Paul
 
Paul said:
I didn't know there was more than one of them.

This one has instructions like BartPE, only it has its own
list of plugins. I guess that's the value adder compared to BartPE.
This requires a Windows installer CD (for the tool to extract files from),
and the new CD is built from the Windows install files, plus plugins and
so on.

http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

I have a UBCD502.iso here, and that one appears to have multiple
options in it, and a GRUB4DOS directory. That's probably not built
using BartPE.

The only one I've played with, is the BartPE one. I downloaded
UBCD502.iso back in 2010, but it doesn't look like I did anything with
it. This is UBCD502.iso running in a VM.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8919/ubcd502.gif

This is BartPE running in a VM. The UBCD4Win may share something with this
(how it works), but the skinning could be different. I've never tried
UBCD4Win. Even trying BartPE was a stretch for me. It wasn't hard to
use, but I guess I'm just not a fan of cooking up new ISO files over
and over again. When I run the BartPE disc, I usually am doing things
from the Command Prompt window.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/9718/bartpe.gif

This is a picture I could find of a UBCD4Win running. Looks like
it's got a few more decorations than a BartPE.

http://www.bleepstatic.com/tutorials/driveimage-xml/ubcd4win-desktop.jpg
Click to expand...
I tried the "standard" version way back when, and wasn't crazy about it. Then I tried an earlier version of the "4WIN"
method (using the BartPE) and stayed with it ever since.

The version I had was 3.0 something, so I decided to create a newer one (3.60) just to see if maybe it booted a little
faster; the older one was horrendously long. I ran everything like as per the instructions, and kept getting an error
when it was creating the ISO. It was having a problem writing to TXTSETUP.SIF in the I386 folder of the XP CD I copied
to my hard drive. I opened it, and it's just a text file, so I saved it and tried again. This time it created the ISO,
but it wouldn't boot. No error or anything; it just hung for about 5 minutes before I ejected the CD and aborted the
boot up.

So then I thought (after trying a few other things) that maybe it was now having a problem with the time stamp. I
installed SKTimeStamp

http://code.google.com/p/stexbar/downloads/list

and opened the properties of the original and the one I had not changed, but merely saved. I adjusted to new one to the
original dates, ran the Builder again, and it created a working ISO.

I created the CD from that ISO, and it booted up in probably 3 to 4 minutes, which is a heck of a lot faster than the
older version I had.

I've only had occasion to use it a very few times, but found it useful. Once I remember was to resize a disk, and my
UBCD4WIN was closer at hand than my Partition Manager disk; and one other time was on a friends laptop (he picked up a
nasty somewhere). The built-in AV was enough to get it to boot again, and was able to clean in up nicely.

I don't do near as much work on PCs as I used to, but I like to mess around with utilities like these. Who knows, it may
come in handy again some day. Maybe I'll try to create one using my Win7 DVD and see what happens :-) Probably not
today, but who knows? If I become bored enough . . .
 
I used CDBurner to burn ISO file ubcd51b1.iso.

This seemed to go smoothly creating a bootable CD for my WinXP SP3
computer.

The Nero SmartStart suggested in UBCD's Tutorial at the following link did
not work.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/nero6.html
It displayed an error message that it was not compatible with my operating
system. Hmmm. I was unable to find a free Nero tool that was comparable.

The bootable CD has some diagnostics, but I had hoped for something
different. For example, I thought I might be able to use this to recover
saved music and pictures from my hard drive in the event my computer ever
failed to boot. No problem as this was all an experiment to see what UBCD
provided.

I already have a bootable CD that came with my Dell computer It runs (i.e.,
boots) if I press <F12> during boot. It may be too early to rule out ever
using my newly created UBCD bootable CD. But at this point my first option
would probably be to use the Dell CD if my laptop won't boot.

This procedure is not for the faint of heart and I totally agree with this
comment by Paul.

********************
"Some people, if I mention a free software, they run off and find some "hell
hole" to download from, and then complain they got a "registry cleaner"
instead :-) Even when you do find the source website, it can be hard to find
the proper download link, due to so many adverts being present.)"
*********************

I had to do a lot of cleanup (i.e., uninstalls of unnecessary software)
after I was done. My Avast! anti-virus software even displayed a warning
about using one of these undesirable downloads.

Thank you everyone for your excellent comments.
 
Correction:

I already have a bootable CD that came with my Dell computer

should be

I already have a bootable DIAGNOSTIC CD that came with my Dell computer
 
Michael said:
I used CDBurner to burn ISO file ubcd51b1.iso.

This seemed to go smoothly creating a bootable CD for my WinXP SP3
computer.

The Nero SmartStart suggested in UBCD's Tutorial at the following link did
not work.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/nero6.html
It displayed an error message that it was not compatible with my operating
system. Hmmm. I was unable to find a free Nero tool that was comparable.

The bootable CD has some diagnostics, but I had hoped for something
different. For example, I thought I might be able to use this to recover
saved music and pictures from my hard drive in the event my computer ever
failed to boot. No problem as this was all an experiment to see what UBCD
provided.

I already have a bootable CD that came with my Dell computer It runs (i.e.,
boots) if I press <F12> during boot. It may be too early to rule out ever
using my newly created UBCD bootable CD. But at this point my first option
would probably be to use the Dell CD if my laptop won't boot.

This procedure is not for the faint of heart and I totally agree with this
comment by Paul.

********************
"Some people, if I mention a free software, they run off and find some "hell
hole" to download from, and then complain they got a "registry cleaner"
instead :-) Even when you do find the source website, it can be hard to find
the proper download link, due to so many adverts being present.)"
*********************

I had to do a lot of cleanup (i.e., uninstalls of unnecessary software)
after I was done. My Avast! anti-virus software even displayed a warning
about using one of these undesirable downloads.

Thank you everyone for your excellent comments.
Click to expand...

In terms of rescue software as such, there is Photorec. This could be
a scavenger, looking for sectors containing the "signature portions"
of the file. Tools like this may not work well, if the disk is fragmented,
as the idea is, the file system is damaged enough, there is nothing to
tie the fragments together. Photorec can be run from Windows or Linux.
For a test, I used this to find a deleted file (as deleted files aren't
overwritten until the file system needs the space).

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec

The other tool you can look for, is Drive Rescue. The person who wrote this
originally, was giving it away for free. And then one day, sold the source
to a commercial company, and shut down his site. This link is to a copy
of the tool. I can also find the original site, in archive.org . The site
seems to be unchanged, all the way back to 2003.

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/WoundedMoon/win32/driverescue19d.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20070101070056/http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20030303125843/http://woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html

One person who had an NTFS disk problem, he tried that out, and got all his
files back. You connect a second disk, and I think that tool tries to find
the files and writes them to your spare disk. You generally don't want to
try writing the recovered files to the same disk you are scavenging if possible.

Tools like CHKDSK, attempt to "repair in place", and that is a dangerous
option. If you have severe damage and know it, you want to make a forensic
copy of the disk first, before letting CHKDSK run. There is a two pass,
sector by sector backup method for damaged disks you can do from Linux,
using "ddrescue". It's for cases, where the disk is badly damaged enough,
that each sector copy is taking 15 seconds or so, and it would take
infinite time to complete. This does a quick first pass, and keeps a log
of "missing" sectors. If the disk has a "bad patch", this is intended to
get the good sectors first. And then, the second pass tries to fill in the
blanks. Sectors which fail to read, I think they're replaced by all-zeros.
The destination disk here, should be same size or larger than the original.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

# first, grab most of the error-free areas in a hurry:
./ddrescue -n /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log

# then try to recover as much of the dicy areas as possible:
./ddrescue -r 1 /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log

If you want to run tools like CHKDSK from a DVD, you can download
a Windows 7 installation DVD, and it has recovery options which
include a "command prompt" environment. A Windows 7 machine can
make a 200MB CD with that purpose, and one site was providing
links to an image of such a CD. The download in that case was
via Torrent. Now, the interesting thing is, the web sites
that Microsoft uses for selling Windows 7 from, have "open"
download links, and you can get the entire DVD image from
such a site. You burn that to a DVD, and then that can be used
as your rescue disk. You could run CHKDSK from there, for
example.

This site shows some links. Digital River is a company that sells
software for download, and is an authorized dealer. I got a copy of
24208 and 24209 from the links shown here, in case I need to do
a "repair install" of my Windows 7 laptop. Slipstreaming doesn't
work as well for Windows 7, as for WinXP, so having one of these discs,
for the day the laptop dies, is why I got 24209. And 24209 can be booted
and you can run the Command Prompt from there.

http://www.mostiwant.com/blog/downl...rated-dvd-iso-official-direct-download-links/

There is also a recovery console image for WinXP floating around.
I think I may have run that in a VM, and it gives you a command
prompt, and it would give you capabilities like "fixboot", "fixmbr",
and chkdsk. The original site is now gone, but you can find this
on the archive. There should be an iso inside the zip.

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/Tools/bootdiscs/xp_rec_con.zip

4,677,680 bytes
MD5SUM = 230f7800105440e8433006a033186f6f

As for the "Hell Hole" comment, a few people I help, are quite insistent
on doing a random search when some software is mentioned, and clicking
every link in sight. Maybe it's the notion of "well, I'm running an AV
software, so nothing can harm me". I use Siteadvisor on occasion, as
a way of warning about certain sites. You enter the domain, and in
some cases, they actually test downloads coming from the site, for
malware. Most sites get a "pass" via this thing, so again, only
the most egregious sources of malware will get flagged. Some are
given a pass, when they need more analysis.

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/allflac.com

HTH,
Paul
 
Hot-Text said:
Maybe that SoCal, computer guy not that knowledgeable at all,
if he can not take the time to read a website, and ask the Caller is his
computer is a SP1, 2, or 3.......
Click to expand...

For the record, the name of the "computer guy" is Leo Laporte. I just found
out he is syndicated nationally. I'm surprised that he may have been off
base with regard to his UBCD recommendation. There's also a chance I am
misquoting him,

I've been using and programming computers since the 1970s and found most of
his comments (or should I say other comments - ha) spot on. He also comes
across as very personable and thorough.

*******
From my radio station's website:

Leo is nationally syndicated and also appears regularly on many television
and radio programs including Live with Regis and Kelly. He hosts and
produces some of the most popular podcasts in the world including this WEEK
in TECH, Security Now!, net@nite, The Daily Giz Wiz, Windows Weekly,
MacBreak Weekly, and Jumping Monkeys under the TWiT banner.

http://www.kogo.com/pages/personalities.html?feed=122446&article=3494777#ixzz1rstM4cvp
*******
 
J. P. Gilliver (John) said:
There is also a recovery console image for WinXP floating around.
I think I may have run that in a VM, and it gives you a command
prompt, and it would give you capabilities like "fixboot", "fixmbr",
and chkdsk. The original site is now gone, but you can find this
on the archive. There should be an iso inside the zip.

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/Tools/bootdiscs/xp_rec_con.zip

4,677,680 bytes
MD5SUM = 230f7800105440e8433006a033186f6f
Click to expand...

I get a 404 from that link now )-:.
As for the "Hell Hole" comment, a few people I help, are quite insistent
on doing a random search when some software is mentioned, and clicking
every link in sight. Maybe it's the notion of "well, I'm running an AV
software, so nothing can harm me". I use Siteadvisor on occasion, as
a way of warning about certain sites. You enter the domain, and in
some cases, they actually test downloads coming from the site, for
malware. Most sites get a "pass" via this thing, so again, only
the most egregious sources of malware will get flagged. Some are
given a pass, when they need more analysis.

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/allflac.com
Click to expand...
[]
Or just http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/[/QUOTE]

You can get the webtree.ca entry via archive.org .

I didn't provide a link, on purpose (because of previous incidents,
where I mention something, and it is later removed).

Paul
 
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