Hiren's Boot CD (HBCD)

[mojoey]

I just found this gem, and oh my probe....it's amazing. Think recovery disk on steroids.

It has several Anti-virus utilities, linux rescue enviroments, hard drive utilities, and mini windows enviroments (used for running the AV programs).

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd


I hope this helps out those who were looking for something like it

 

[garyw]

This tool is quite useful but there is NO substitute for regular, offsite backups!

 

[Cras]

Looks very useful. Only where do you download it? :shrug:

 

[Ripley]

I've been using this for some years...
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

 

[mojoey]

Looks very useful. Only where do you download it? :shrug:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
EDIT: :ninja:ed by ripley

---------- Post added at 08:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:08 AM ----------

tested the Password reset tool, and the tool 'Gparted' they worked like a dream!

I set the password for my account to 'iloveorbiter1969' and let it try and reset, and it worked perfectly! Also, there's a spare partition E:\ sitting on here, waiting for Ubuntu

 

[garyw]

tested the Password reset tool, and the tool 'Gparted' they worked like a dream!

Try Gparted on a dynamic volume instead of a basic. I bet it doesn't work.

 

[Keatah]

Agreed on the offsite backup thing. With offsite backups you can recover your system even if it gottened eatened by a funky rogue black hole.

 

[Napalm42]

With offsite backups, and storage of "non-replacable" files, you don't really ever have to need this. MY computer went down twice in its 5 year history, once from component malfunction, and once from a virus that came in on a disk that was lent to me. Rather than taking three hours to fix it and get a semi stable system in return, I just reformatted and ta-da. Brand new.

This may have its perks, sure, but having a USB drive where you can stuff your important stuff into works just as well, and is probably less hassle IMO.

 

[Keatah]

Agreed on the virus thing too. Unless you spend hours becoming intimately familiar with what the piece of mal-ware does, you'll never be sure you've restored your system 100%. I've done this hundreds of times on many systems and can comment from a position of experience and authority.

Some folks may think resorting to restoring from a backup or reformatting is brute-force and an inelegant solution. They believe the system should be hunt'n'pecked through by a technician and 'certified' and scanned with anti-virus and this and that. Well, now, that's all fine and good.. But I don't intend on spending 10's of hours actually doing that.

The goal here is to minimize downtime as much as possible and return to a secure and functional state. This goes for home systems as well as corporate datacenters.

 

[streb2001]

This happened to me a year ago. Some unpleasant virus brought in on a memory stick, started tagging .dll code on the end of all my html files amongst other things. Since I always make regular backups of my data, I simply blitzed the drive and reinstalled Windows (my own NLited version with drivers, service pack and all).

Trying to unravel a virus is a miserable exercise. Make backups to DVD-R once a month or at critical points and give them to relatives or trusted friends telling them to put them somewhere safe. You will hopefully never need them again.

The three golden rules of system administration:
1. Backup
2. Backup
3. Backup

 

[Linguofreak]

Try Gparted on a dynamic volume instead of a basic. I bet it doesn't work.

I believe it only has detect/read support for Linux logical volume management, so it's almost certain that it doesn't support Windows dynamic partitions either.

 

[Ripley]

Disk imaging is enourmosly time-saving! Today I restored a full pc at the office in...what was it...10 minutes with Clonezilla! Super fast.

 

[mojoey]

I believe it only has detect/read support for Linux logical volume management, so it's almost certain that it doesn't support Windows dynamic partitions either.

I'm almost positive that I saw a video about someone using Gparted to do that...

 

[Keatah]

Yes it is. Typically when if and when I have a major issue I set the restore going, brew up some tea and kick back - Knowing full well that whatever the problem was, it will be repaired.

Viruses don't stand a chance. And as an added bonus - with a known good backup - if the problem persists then hardware could be at fault. As I recently experienced a few months back.

Couldn't get a stable system after 2 restores. Found a memory issue, failing bits detected by Memtest86.