Emergency Boot CD?

[Guest]

Back in the 1980's, one could always boot a balky machine with a DOS startup
diskette and poke around to copy files, save things, etc. That is not much
help today, especially with hugh NTFS hard disks and/or no diskette drives.
I am looking for a bootable CD, that will at least offer a safe mode
environment; I have not seen anything. So my question is - am I missing
something?

I found a Knoppix (Linux) bootable CD that will let me view files, but it is
pretty messy - volumes are different, etc. (What is frequently needed is to
do an update to virus protection files by downloading them, and then run
antivirus s/w.) Recovery Console is awful. No one can remember their
original admin. password; OEM recovery CD's are a disaster, wiping out
everything.

Ghost, Powerquest, and Acronis allow partition imaging (if you have
partitions and take the time to back them up - for some reasons OEM's do not
offer partitions?). Acronis further allows one to restore selected files -
but not from the emergency boot CD! So my question is - am I missing
something?

George McKinney

 

[Dick Kistler]

Back in the 1980's, one could always boot a balky machine with a DOS
startup diskette and poke around to copy files, save things, etc.
That is not much help today, especially with hugh NTFS hard disks
and/or no diskette drives. I am looking for a bootable CD, that will
at least offer a safe mode environment; I have not seen anything. So
my question is - am I missing something?

I found a Knoppix (Linux) bootable CD that will let me view files,
but it is pretty messy - volumes are different, etc. (What is
frequently needed is to do an update to virus protection files by
downloading them, and then run antivirus s/w.) Recovery Console is
awful. No one can remember their original admin. password; OEM
recovery CD's are a disaster, wiping out everything.

Ghost, Powerquest, and Acronis allow partition imaging (if you have
partitions and take the time to back them up - for some reasons OEM's
do not offer partitions?). Acronis further allows one to restore
selected files - but not from the emergency boot CD! So my question
is - am I missing something?

George McKinney

How about BartPE: http://nu2.nu/pebuilder/

A Windows XP recovery CD.

Dick Kistler