| Several times I’ve been called upon at a moment’s notice to troubleshoot a misbehaving PC system either at work or at a friend’s or relative’s home. Being the “go to” guy for these sorts of problems is both a curse and a blessing, but I guess that is besides the point.
One tool that I have found to be valuable beyond compare is the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD). This compilation of software has just about everything you need to diagnose hard to find low level problems, and also some other tools that every PC technician should have available. |
It has been around for a long time, but I still know a lot of techs who don’t know about it. Ultimate Boot CD includes memory checkers, CPU stress testers, system information tools, boot managers and tools for hard drives, partitions, password resets, and more. For a full list, check out the UBCD page.
Typically, this is burned onto an ISO and you boot using a CD. But isn’t that so “last year”? Putting it onto a USB Drive makes it much more portable and it can sit side by side with your other portable tech tools.
The directions on how to do this are courtesy of pendrivelinux:
That’s it! You now have a bootable USB drive. Any machine you wish to boot with this drive must be set to boot from USB, so this might mean a trip into the boot menu.
After booting from the drive you’ll see the UBCD menu:
Some great things I’ve used the UBCD to do:
So give it a shot if you are the type of person who is always called upon to fix people’s PCs!
Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ systembash.com.
Filed Under: Cool Software Apps ¦ How-To
Tags: diagnostic, repair, usb drive
i’m not a fan of ubcd. yeah it has tons of really useful utilities, but i find that there is so many redundant applications and many times much older versions than the current versions.
i find that in theory, ubcd is a friggin great idea. but in practice, it’s really hard for them to keep everything up to date. that is of course if you roll with your own custom rescue cd and hand select what you want on it.
i much prefer to have a bunch of utilities with me that i know are updated and work well. of course all tested and verified before i work on my client’s machines.
what do you guys think?
I agree that some of the software packages are not up to date. But, unless you have the skills or time to roll your own, they all work pretty well to do the job. If I have problems with one, usually one of the other ones works well enough to get the job done!
Do we need this if the UBCD alreay support USB (although experimental)?
Take from: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
[...] The PC Repair Toolkit in your Pocket: Boot CD on a USB Stick | MakeUseOf.com [...]
What I’d really love to have is actually a UBCD4Win on my USB stick.
[...] The Pen Drive Linux weblog details how to install the Ultimate Boot CD, a popular system recovery tool, directly to your thumb drive so you can carry your emergency recovery toolbox in your pocket. We mentioned Ultimate Boot CD’s thumb drive-ability when we highlighted UBCD as one of the top 10 free system recovery tools, but Pen Drive Linux steps through the process and includes links to all the files you’ll need to download to set it up. The guide is clear and easy to follow, so repurposing that extra thumb drive as a system recovery drive should be a snap. Install and Boot Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) from a USB Thumbdrive [Pen Drive Linux via MakeUseOf] [...]
[...] The Pen Drive Linux weblog details how to install the Ultimate Boot CD, a popular system recovery tool, directly to your thumb drive so you can carry your emergency recovery toolbox in your pocket. We mentioned Ultimate Boot CD’s thumb drive-ability when we highlighted UBCD as one of the top 10 free system recovery tools, but Pen Drive Linux steps through the process and includes links to all the files you’ll need to download to set it up. The guide is clear and easy to follow, so repurposing that extra thumb drive as a system recovery drive should be a snap. Install and Boot Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) from a USB Thumbdrive [Pen Drive Linux via MakeUseOf] [...]
[...] The PC Repair Toolkit in your Pocket: Boot CD on a USB Stick | MakeUseOf.com (tags: usb tools boot software toolkit repair hardware howto ** debugging) [...]
You are a life saver. Just what I need! You’ve been Dugged.
A practical method, but dude, I would definitely embed more stuff on that stick, OS related and file-system tools are always on demand. Virus and spyware scanners come in handy at times when called for a PC problem.
[...] for these sorts of problems is both a curse and a blessing, but I guess that is besides the point.read more | digg story addthis_url = [...]
Not to mention that as a tech myself, i find waaaay too many users that have computers that don’t have a bios that supports booting from USB. They’re a lot more common than you might realize. A knoppix live cd with diagnostic tools or a PE cd might be a tad more useful.
[...] read more | digg story Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
Very few computers will boot to a usb thumb drive.
[...] The Pen Drive Linux weblog details how to install the Ultimate Boot CD, a popular system recovery tool, directly to your thumb drive so you can carry your emergency recovery toolbox in your pocket. We mentioned Ultimate Boot CD’s thumb drive-ability when we highlighted UBCD as one of the top 10 free system recovery tools, but Pen Drive Linux steps through the process and includes links to all the files you’ll need to download to set it up. The guide is clear and easy to follow, so repurposing that extra thumb drive as a system recovery drive should be a snap. Install and Boot Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) from a USB Thumbdrive [Pen Drive Linux via MakeUseOf] [...]
[...] read more | digg story [...]
[...] times I’ve been called upon at a moment’s notice to troubleshoot a misbehaving PC system either at work or at a friend’s or relative’s home. Being the “go to” guy for these sorts [...]
[...] times I’ve been called upon at a moment’s notice to troubleshoot a misbehaving PC system either at work or at a friend’s or relative’s home. Being the “go to” guy for these sorts [...]
[...] Here are the instructions to installing UBCD on your USB drive. [...]
This is pretty old news but not bad. Unfortunately, the one time I could have used this to be helpful, the PC’s BIOS wasn’t capable of booting from Linux.
But you can have some fun stealing passwords with this and wreaking havoc.
[...] The PC Repair Toolkit in your Pocket: Boot CD on a USB Stick (tags: pc repair usb boot software tools toolkit ubcd) [...]
[...] The PC Repair Toolkit in your Pocket: Boot CD on a USB Stick | MakeUseOf.com (tags: apps article bootable cd computers download Drive flash freeware geek howto lifehack lifehacks linux pc pendrive portable productivity recovery support sysadmin tech technology tips todo tool toread troubleshooting useful util utilities utility vista web windows usb tools boot repair hardware Software toolkit) [...]
I love that you can put it on a thumb drive but unfortunately I have a lot of friends and family members with older computers that may be a little tough to get booting from a USB drive, the bootable CD is a great universal tool and although having it on a thumb drive may be handy having it on a CD is absolutely crucial.
[...] PC Repair Toolkit in your Pocket: Boot CD on a USB Stickread more | digg [...]
[...] Instructions here on how to make an Ultimate Boot CD… on a USB stick, instead of a CD drive. Obviously useful if the CD drive is not operational, or because a USB stick is pretty easy to carry around, while CD’s don’t exactly fit in your pocket. [...]
[...] Well Brian, the one thing that comes to my mind is the Ultimate Boot CD, on a USB key. A complete how-to is provided here by Dave Drager at makeuseot.com. [...]
quite practical