Geek Repair: Create Your Own Ultimate Recovery CD
If you’ve ever had booting problems, spyware or viruses, you’ve likely attempted to boot from the Windows CD and run some repairs… but sometimes that’s just not enough. Sure, you can easily backup your data using Ubuntu, but a much better option is to use the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.
The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is a recovery CD with loads of useful software for repairing or fixing almost any Windows problem. Because it’s based on Windows XP, there are many really helpful tools included that you are likely already familiar with.
Note that the installation will create the ISO/CD from your Windows XP CD… you can’t download the boot CD directly.
Building the Ultimate Boot CD
The first thing you’ll want to do is download and install the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD4Win) software, which is just the toolkit for creating your own CD version.
After installing UBCD4Win, you’ll be prompted on first launch to search for the Windows XP installation files. I’d just choose No and manually pick the source in the next step.
In my case, I added the Windows XP cd into my disc drive, and picked D:\ as the source. You’ll notice in the Media output section you can choose to burn the disc directly to a CD, although I prefer to create an ISO image.
You’ll notice the Plugins button, which will let you turn features on the boot cd on or off. Since we’re not worried about that, just click the Build button, and you’ll have to wait for a while for the CD or ISO image to be created.
At the end of the process you should see an ISO file in the location specified above, and it will likely be around 640mb in size.
You can use any number of cd burning packages to create the actual CD, but I prefer to use ImgBurn because it’s nice and simple. (note that this screenshot is from a machine that doesn’t have a burner… just for illustration).
Now that you have the CD, it’s time to stick it in the drive and boot from it. You’ll be nearly immediately presented with the boot options menu, where you can run a memory test, access the XP recovery console, or just hit the Enter key to start up the ultimate boot cd.
Once it finally boots (which can take a while), you’ll be presented with a desktop that looks and works similarly to XP, although it’s actually running GeoShell, a minimalist shell replacement application.
There are any number of really useful utilities installed, like previously mentioned DriveImage XML, which can be used to create full backups of your hard drive.
There’s another tool called SelfImage which isn’t quite as user-friendly looking, but will let you clone a drive with just a few clicks.
And of course there are a number of Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware utilities, very useful for dealing with a spyware infestation that is preventing you from booting.
Finally, there’s a number of MBR fixing utilities, which will help if you are having issues booting.
There’s a lot more tools, too many to cover right now… but stay tuned because we’re going to start explaining useful scenarios to help you troubleshoot, as well as some other boot disks.
Note: You’ll need a copy of Windows XP to create the CD, but you can actually use the CD to repair some elements of a Vista machine as well.
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This will save the day. I’m sure of it.
This is very informative and helpful. Thank-you
Hi from Italy.
In the cd you can also integrate some other interesting software if you have it insalled on the pc making the building. Read the documentation for this.
Well worth the time it takes to build. Never needed it myself, but I have saved already a couple of people’s a%%es. I try to keep a copy always at hand.
Too bad some utils don’t work properly in Vista (e. g., FixMBR only does half the fix).
I have a laptop (HP) that asked me to create a recovery cd, which I never did. I now have problems due to a virus and need to create this cd. And obvously, this tool would help alot. Anyone have any ideas for me?
Thanks.
And, after you’ve created this wonderful CD customized to your tastes, if you have a spare 1GB USB stick laying around not doing much at all, you can transfer the contents of the UBCD4Win directly to the USB stick and end up with a bootable USB stick version of it using a utility called PE2USB, which you can find more about here:
http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=petousb
Very cool utility, and booting off the USB stick version is quite a bit faster as well. Also makes it easier to update the AV signatures as required.
If you do make a UBCD4Win, here’s the best tip I can offer: use a CDRW – that way you can update it any time you choose just by erasing it and updating it with whatever new utilities you choose to add.
Have fun, always…
indeed a very useful article.
@ br0adband
how am i suppose to update the virus definitions? lets assume that i am on a bootable USB pendrive?
can i retrieve my files from my laptop with this?
(i have a windows xp startup failure)
@bennet: I think so. You can access you files with this and save them to a floppy, external hard drive or burn them to a CD.
There is also another article on this site for using a Ubuntu disc to do that if you either have a Ubuntu disc already or don’t have a Windows XP disc to make a UBCD4Win disc with.
will this work without the windows xp disk?
and can i back up all photo’s from this as well?
Help please
Thanks
GREAT !!!
my question is….( i have had this SpywareProtect 2009 virus since January) it won’t let me boot or reboot my desktop PC. and when i run in Safe mode, i can’t do nothing. One time it allowed me to log on to windows but then there’s this pop-up: (windows system cannot verify (null) and it’s component. please check and type it again and search for it) i think it’s the virus doing that or something. Anyway can i download the UBCD from another PC and burn it onto a CD and put it in my infected PC? would it work?
please help me out…
Robert: run ComboFix. You might have to rename the .exe to do so. This will remove this variant of SmitFraud.
Hi Geek,
Just wanted to convey my sincere thanks to you for maintaining and updating such a great website – neatly categorized. I just happen to find it yesterday during a google search and very happy to see wealth of information in your site. Great Work! Thank you…