Besides a bootable floppy disk, a bootable CD-ROM can be of great help in certain situations. Especially if you don't have a floppy drive, you have to rely on a bootable CD-ROM to be able to fix some problems. Depending on what task you want to achieve, you need a different bootable CD-ROM. This page provides you the rough information what bootable CD-ROM's would be suitable for you and where to download them. Please experiment with those,..... at your own risk of course.
If you were able to create a bootable MS-DOS floppy disk, then you can use this floppy as an image for a bootable MS-DOS CD-ROM. With a burning utility like Nero you can choose to make a bootable data disk with the floppy as boot image. If you don't have a floppy drive, you will have to do this on another computer. Of course you can provide the floppy disk and/or CD-ROM with the necessary tools. Notice that the burned CD-ROM appears to be empty, the data has been put on the boot sector.
If you boot from this CD-ROM, a virtual drive A: will be created. Only if you provided the floppy with CD-ROM drivers, the CD-ROM drives will be available as well.
Notice: this procedure makes it possible to create a bootable system backup CD-ROM (needed if you are not provided with a floppy drive).
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Bart's PE (Preinstalled Environment, download: www.nu2.nu/pebuilder) makes it possible to create your own Windows XP environmental, bootable from CD-ROM . With Bart's PE you can access partitions, even if your own XP doesn't boot anymore. This is the perfect tool to restore your data as described earlier, if your own system is not accessible anymore. Because Bart's PE is Windows XP based, all external storage disks (like USB stick or external hard disk) are accessible without installing any drivers. It takes some time to create your perfect Bart's PE, but it's worth the effort. This tool offers many possibilities like: adobe reader, internet access, file recovery, CD-burning and many others plug-ins are available.
De System Rescue CD (download: www.sysresccd.org) offers you an extended Linux based bootable CD-ROM. This CD-ROM contains some interesting tools:
If you would like to experiment with a new operating system (keeping your current operating system), then it's necessary to create more then one partition. If you don't like to pay for partitioningsoftware like Partition Magic, then GParted Live CD (download: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php) is one of the remaining options. This free partitionmanager (based on Linux) has the advantage to be able to resize a NTFS-partition without loosing data. Unfotunately, GParted Live CD doesn't function on all systems because the hardware is not always supported correctly.
The Ultimate Boot CD (download: www.ultimatebootcd.com) is one of the bootable CD's which must be within reach in case of troubles. The CD contains multiple usefull systemtools (visit the website for an overview). This CD was very usefull to me saving valuable data from an inaccessible hard disk (because of a corrupted partition table caused by a multiboot systeem with Linux). A new variant on this CD is the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (download: www.ubcd4win.com).
Emergency Boot CD (EBCD, download: ebcd.pcministry.com, choose the pro version to have all options) is a very usable bootable CD-ROM. EBCD has a few interesting tools like: saving files with Volkov Commander (I rather use Bart's PE) and deleting the password from the Windows XP administrator account without knowing the real password. Also imaging the hard disk and testing the memory is possible.
Changing the password from one of the useraccounts can also be done with the bootable CD Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. You can find this CD on home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd.
The site Login Recovery (www.loginrecovery.com) gives the opportunity to recover the administrator passwords of aWindows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Longhorn/Vista system without changing the password. For an immediate access to the password, a small fee is needed to cover the costs. If you can wait a few days, then the service is free. My advise would be to change the password after the password has been recovered!
The 911 CD (download: www.911cd.net), another bootable CD......
Would you like to try Linux safely? Try Knoppix (download: www.knoppix.org), a bootable Linux CD-ROM. Remember: don't mess with the partitions on your hard disk.
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