Latest news

8 Sep 2003: Ver 1.6 has just been released! I wish I had more time to work on Ultimate Boot CD this weekend, but that's all I have for this release. I have added some missing key mappings, thanks to a reminder from Guillaume. I have also added a full F-Prot boot disk contributed by P J Wooledge (previously the macro virus definitions could not fit in). Finally, I have added a very nice tool called SPFDISK, which is a fantastic substitute (and more!) for FDISK.

8 Sep 2003: Ver 1.5 has just been released! I have switched to Boot Scriptor for authoring the CD, so now the menu is in full color! Added Tom's Boot Disk, g4u, HDClone (Free Edition), Active NTFS Reader for DOS and TestDisk. Windows Memory Diagnostic now works due to the use of DiskEmu. The customization section has been updated to reflect the use of Boot Scriptor instead of BCD. As before, it will take a while for the mirrors to reflect the new version, so please be patient.

3 Sep 2003: Added generic JPEG CDR label contributed by Alex Sierra. Added CDR label for Neato's MediaFACE II contributed by Jim Allen. Added a bug fix to the customization section (thanks to Olaf Morgenstern for spotting this bug)!

News archive

Overview

You need the Ultimate Boot CD if you want to:

• Run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on them.
• Free yourself from the slow loading speed of the floppy drive. Even if you do have a floppy drive, it is still much much faster to run your diagnostic tools from the CDROM drive, rather than wait for the tool to load from the floppy drive.
• Consolidate as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD. Wouldn't you like to avoid digging into the dusty box to look for the right floppy disk, but simply run them all from a single CD? Then the Ultimate Boot CD is for you!

Tools currently included in the Ultimate Boot CD are:

When you boot up from the CD, a text-based menu would be displayed, and you would be able to select the tool you want to run. The selected tool actually boots off a virtual floppy disk created in memory.

Screenshot

Downloads

Mirror site #1 (Courtesy of Marcus Widén) (Ver 1.6)

Mirror site #2 (Courtesy of Bruno Tiago Rodrigues) (Ver 1.6)

Mirror site #3 (Courtesy of Jonathon Merz) (Ver 1.6) Note: There are only 3 connections total at a time. To give everyone a chance, only one connection is allowed per IP address at a time. Also to give everyone a chance, you will be disconnected after 5 minutes of inactivity. The server limits each individual connection to 15 kilobytes per second. The FTP Server is behind a firewall, so if you are using an FTP client (as opposed to a web browser), PASV connections are required (web browsers should do that automatically for ftp). Also for those using an FTP client, us the user name 'anonymous' with your email address as the password. Please be patient and do not hammer the server. If you attempt to connect more than 10 times in 2 minute period, your IP address will be banned for one hour. (in other words, if you can't connect due to too many users, make sure to wait 30 seconds before trying again). You can contact ubcdmirror@jonnyelvis.com for more information about this mirror.

Mirror site #4 (Courtesy of MyBootDisks.com) (Ver 1.2)

Mirror site #5 (Courtesy of Tim Vanlint) (Ver 1.6) Note: This mirror has limited bandwidth, and will be taken down if the quota for the month is exceeded.

Mirror site #6 (Courtesy of Derek Alfonso/ICE Networks) (Ver 1.6) Note: ICE Networks provides us with a free mirror for our downloads and we wanted let you know about an offer they have. The ultimate provider of Information, Communications, and Entertainment (ICE) is offering 500 MB of web space and no bandwidth usage limitations for less than $30 per month ($349.95 for one year in advance) and for UltimateBootCD.com visitors ONLY we will waive the $50 setup fee. There is even support for ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, and more. Give ICE Networks a call at (877) ICE-2423 and be sure to visit http://ICEventure.com.

Mirror site #7 (Courtesy of Betty Harrigan) (Ver 1.6) Note: This mirror is provided courtesy of http://www.aoaforums.com.

Mirror site #8 (Courtesy of PC-Bug Fixer) (Ver 1.6)

CDR label template for Roxio EZ CD Creator (Contributed by a user who prefers to remain anonymous)		ezcd_lbl.zip (2KB zipped)
Another CDR label template for Roxio EZ CD Creator (Contributed by Ted Kekatos)		ezcd_lbl2.zip (1.5KB zipped)
CDR label template (business card size) for Nero (Contributed by Toby MacNamara)		nero_lbl.zip (3.5KB zipped)
Generic CDR label in JPEG format (Contributed by Alex Sierra)		jpeg_lbl.zip (59.2KB zipped)
Another CDR label in JPEG format (Contributed by Jeannette Randall)		jpeg_lbl2.zip (216KB zipped)
CDR label for Neato's MediaFACE II (Contributed by Jim Allen)		neato_lbl.zip (2.2KB zipped)
CDR label for SureThing CD Labeler (Contributed by Kenny Ellenburg)		std_lbl.zip (85.8KB zipped)

Honors roll

Special thanks to all the donors so far: Gary Beltz, Casey La Salle, Alfred Frisch, Stillman Clampitt, Ted Kekatos, John Jaikovski, Jim Murphy, Edward Fowler, Thomas Elliott, David Chamberlain, Peter Arremann, Daniel Garber, John Safford, Thomas Ryan, Terry Jones, A. Lester Buck III, Scott Wares, David Welch, Robert Siegel, SixOfOne Company, David Gruno

Ultimate Boot CD button

Use the following HTML code to add the Ultimate Boot CD button to your website:

    <a href="http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/"><img src="http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/button.gif" border="0"></a>

The button looks like this:

Getting the physical CD

Some people have asked me how they could "buy" the Ultimate Boot CD. Well, I don't "sell" the Ultimate Boot CD. It's just a personal project of mine. However, a few kind folks have volunteered to prepare and send the CD to those people who want it, for a small fee. I will maintain a list of these people below. Please correspond with them directly if you are interested.

Note that I have absolutely no business dealings or private arrangements with these guys. I simply pass on their contact information. If you have any bad experiences with any of them, don't blame me! Just let me know about the problem, and I will remove them from the list after verification.

Here goes:

New! I have finally setup an account with SwiftCD after they dropped me an email. So now, you can also get the physical CD from them too.

	Both US and international addresses. CD for $14.95. You will be able to select the preferred mode of shipping.
	US addresses only. CD for $14.95. Includes shipping via USPS First Class Mail. Please allow 3 to 4 days for delivery.
	Non-US addresses only. CD for $19.95. Includes shipping via USPS Air Mail. Please allow 4 to 7 days for delivery.

Disclaimer: The cost covers material costs, processing overheads and delivery charges for the CD. I do not made any money from the software!

This SwiftCD setup is still experimental, so email me if you experience any hiccups. I am also trying to setup a payment account with them so that folks who dislike PayPal can use their credit cards directly.

Frequently asked questions

Question: Which operating system does Ultimate Boot CD run on?

Ultimate Boot CD runs independently of any operating system. It will boot from any Intel-compatible machine, regardless of whether DOS/Windows/Linux/BeOS is installed on the machine. However, you do need an operating system and a ISO-capable CD writer software to create the Ultimate Boot CD from the downloaded ISO image file.

Question: What is an ISO image file?

An ISO image file is a platform-independent way to describe the contents of a CD. There are tools on every operating system to recreate a CD from a given ISO image file. Hence it is a good way to distribute CDs over the Internet without having to snail mail the physical disc.

Question: How do I create the Ultimate Boot CD from the ISO image file?

Here are some software you can use to burn ISO image files under Windows:

• Using Nero
• Using Easy CD Creator
• Using WinOnCD

This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are similar tools available on other platforms to burn an ISO image file.

Question: I inserted Ultimate Boot CD into my CDROM drive and rebooted the computer. The reboot was as usual and no text-based menu got displayed. Have I done anything wrong?

Chances are, your BIOS is configured to boot from the harddisk first instead of the CDROM drive. Since your HDD is bootable, it will boot into your usual OS. Change your BIOS settings to boot from the CDROM drive first before the harddisk.

Question: The Ultimate Boot CD just refuse to boot from the CDROM drive, despite the fact that I have double, no, triple checked my BIOS settings. What else could be wrong?

Geez, I wish I know. But here are a couple of random things that you might want to check out. Firstly, are you using a CDRW disc? I have personally encountered some machines that refuse to boot up from certain CDRW discs (eg. 2x works, but 10x doesn't). Secondly, are you sure the disc is in the right drive? One user had two drives, one DVDROM and one CDROM drive. He didn't know the DVDROM drive was set to the master drive, so he was desperately trying to boot from the CDROM drive. When he discovered the problem, he simply move the disc from the CDROM drive to the DVDROM drive, and it worked without problems.

[Contributed by Jimmy Obomsawin] Another possibility that I have run into in many computers (particularly homebrew systems) is that the system searches for a boot device before the CD is read if the BIOS is faster than the CD-ROM. Since it doesn't appear to have a CD (yet), the BIOS will go to the hard drive. To get around this, many BIOSes have an option like "Power on Delay" or "Boot Delay" that lets you delay the system bootup a few seconds, giving the CD-ROM drive time to catch up.

Question: How does one move around in this CD? If I choose to run AIDA16 and afterwards want to go back to the "Screenshot" that you show on your web page, how do I do this?

You don't "move around" the CD because these are separate floppy boot disk images, not one single program. To activate another boot disk image, you'll need to reboot your machine.

Question: Does the Ultimate Boot CD include FDISK?

Nope. I was afraid if I did that Micro$oft might send their secret police after me! :-) But you can use Ranish Partition Manager, which is a very nice and capable substitute for FDISK.

Question: I have created the Ultimate Boot CD v.1.4 as per your instructions. When I run it, the selection screen appears as expected but I have no way of selecting the options. Neither my keyboard nor my mouse are operative on the screen. Can you advise me?

You could be using a USB keyboard/mouse which is not natively supported by your BIOS.

Question: Is it possible to fill up the rest of the CD with other software?

Yes, just create your own customized CD (Hint: You are not restricted to adding .img files only!)

Question: Can I add applications that require booting from multiple disks?

I can't find anyway to do that. If anyone has an idea, do let me know. Right now, if there are 2 disks, I try to put everything onto a 2.88MB disk image (eg. F-Prot), but not every application works when repackaged this way (eg. Seagate latest V2 tools).

How can I add an ISO image to the Ultimate Boot CD?

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do that. If anyone has an idea, do let me know.

Customizing Ultimate Boot CD

The Ultimate Boot CD cannot possibly contain boot disks of commercial software eg. MS-DOS, Windows, Ghost etc. It also cannot contain boot disks specific to your environment eg. network drivers, SCSI drivers etc. This section talks about how to create your own customized Ultimate Boot CD, tailored to your specific needs.

First, download the latest version of Boot Scriptor from here or here. Unzip in any directory eg. c:\bs. Ensure folders are preserved when unzipping.

Then, download a Win32 port of mkisofs here. There are a number of files inside the ZIP file. You only need to extract mkisofs.exe and cygwin1.dll to a directory which is in the system path (eg. c:\windows\system32).

Copy bscript.ini from \bscript on the CD to c:\bs\bscript.

Copy all the *.img files in the \bscript\modules\isolinux on the CD to c:\bs\bscript\modules\isolinux.

You should now have a directory structure that looks like:

c:\bs\
  bscript\
    bscript.bin
    bscript.ini
    bscriptw.com
    loader.bin
    modules\
      [Various .bsm files]
      isolinux\
        memdisk
        [Various .img files]
  licenses\
  tools\
  changes.txt
  rpm.txt

You can now customize the Ultimate Boot CD by adding your own floppy images to the CD. Floppy disk images can be created from the physical floppy disks themselves by using utilities such as rawread or WinImage.

Place your personal floppy disk images under c:\bs\bscript\files\isolinux. Then edit c:\bs\bscript\bscript.ini to add each floppy disk image and its activation keystroke to the final ISO image.

Finally, at the command prompt, from c:\bs, type:

mkisofs -o /ubcd.iso -b bscript/loader.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 .

This will create ubcd.iso in the root directory of the current drive.

Note: If you are getting this error: mkisofs: Missing pathspec, you have missed out the final period in the command line. Go take a careful look again. The period is important as it tells mkisofs to include all files/subdirectories in the current directory to the ISO image.

What users say about Ultimate Boot CD

• Just to say thanks for Ultimate Boot CD :) I had a HD die on me, and since I don't use a floppy drive, the UBCD program was really helpful for the Seagate diagnostic program. - Stitchz
• The Ultimate Boot CD is actually a dream come true, what great utilities to have on one CD! - Marcus Widén
• Thanks for making and sharing this useful little set of tools. I've just assembled most of these same utils as separate boot disks, but your bootable CDROM solution is *much* more convenient. - Bob Prosperi
• Let me say what a great program Ultimate Boot CD is .....it's saved my hide on more than one occasion, especially since I don't have a floppy drive (they're pretty much dead nowadays). - Peter Laltoo
• One of the main reasons your CD is so great is because its simple and its LOADED with the features all of us tech's are to busy/lazy to create. Thats why we implore you to keep it simple and remember to shove as much as you can on it as well. - Chris R
• Thanks for making the UBCD! I had been wanting to make something like this for myself, but it's such a pain in the ass to make a multiboot CD. - Zhi Wong
• I think its BRILLIANT what you've put together, its EXACTLY what I've wanted to put together for a while myself but not had the time to learn how to do. Nearly all the tools you include are the very things I would have inlcuded, things I already carry around on floppy disk, so I'll now be that much lighter and better organised. It's the kindof self explanatory tool I was able to download this morning and take out with me and use during the day on various broken systems without reading any documentation whatsoever. - Pete
• Thank you very very very much! I'me just downloading now... but I know it will be great, I wanted to do such a thing, you are the best! You give us the possibility to add our own images! Thank you! - Fabrice Hertz
• Thanks for the creation of this BootCD! I use it at work and it's very useful as I'm a computer tech ;)) - Guillaume
• Top work man! I very much greatly appreciate your work on the UBCD. Keep it up. - Ben Schram
• You guys saved my ass with your CD. - Jeannette Randall
• I gave a copy of the UBCD to one of the windows deskop support folks at work and they were really jazzed. They looked at all the disk utilities and said, "Do you know how much time I've spent tring to find these on the net?" - Scott D. Wares

Mailing list

A mailing list is available for users to discuss any topic related to the Ultimate Boot CD, or wish to know when new versions are released.

Version history

24 Aug 2003: Ver 1.4 has just been released! Added Windows Memory Diagnostic and XFDISK. Updated F-Prot to work with FAT32 and NTFS (read-only). Updated Drive Fitness Test to Ver 3.50.

23 Aug 2003: The hyperlink to the Nero CD label has been fixed. Please try downloading again. I have also added another Easy Creator Creator CD label contributed by Ted Kekatos. Thanks!

19 Aug 2003: Added a Nero CD label contributed by Toby MacNamara. Check it out! Also created an account with SwiftCD, so now you can get the physical CD through them as well.

10 Aug 2003: Ver 1.3 has just been released! Added Diagnostic Tool Ver 6.10 for Fujitsu HDD, SHDIAG Ver 1.25 for Samsung HDD, Feature Tool Ver 1.90 for IBM/Hitachi HDD. Updated AIDA16 to Ver 2.08. The main menu has been reorganized to partition the tools into logical sections. Once again, it will take a while for the mirrors to reflect the new version, so please be patient.

8 Aug 2003: I have revamped the section on customizing the Ultimate Boot CD. The step-by-step instructions should now be clearer for most people to follow. In addition, it is no longer necessary to download an additional file cdrommi.zip. The files on the Ultimate Boot CD itself should suffice.

5 Aug 2003: I have added a CDR label template for Roxio EZ CD Creator, contributed by a user who prefers to remain anonymous. Check it out!

5 Aug 2003: Donation is up again (total: $84)! I was thinking about how I could bring in some pocket money on the side. Will any of you be interested in making customized boot CDs? You can upload floppy disk images to me (commercial or otherwise), I will add them to the Ultimate Boot CD and send you a private link to download the ISO image. Of course, you can still create your own customized boot CD using BCD and the template provided in cdrommi.zip, but you may not want to get your hands dirty, so I am providing an alternative. I am thinking of charging $10 + ($5 x number of floppy disk images). Is that too expensive? If you are interested, please send me an email to discuss.

4 Aug 2003: Donation is marginally up (total: $59). Well, thanks to everyone who donated! Ver 1.2 has just been released, with the upgrade of PowerMax to Ver 4.06, and the addition of Partition Resizer. It will take a while for the mirrors to reflect the new version, so please be patient.

31 July 2003: Thanks for the donations! Total donation now stands at $54. I have also added quite a number of mirror sites, so hopefully they stand firm under the download frenzy. Thanks to Bruno Tiago Rodrigues, Jonathon Merz, Sandip Patel, MyBootDisks.com and Tim Vanlint for providing the mirrors!

30 July 2003: I have received a number of requests to "buy" the physical CD, but I don't want to ruin my regular day job burning CDs at home and licking envelopes. :-) Someone suggested SwiftCD as a fulfillment service. Does anyone know anything about them and whether there are any hidden pitfalls? I just want a reliable, minimum-fuss service that will deliver to those folks who want a physical CD at the lowest-cost possible. At the same time, I don't want to deal with things like minimum orders, inventory etc. Any advice will be welcomed.

30 July 2003: Don't make me beg! I have clocked up quite a princely sum in bandwidth since this site appeared on Lockergnome. So I am appealing to you folks who download the Ultimate Boot CD and find it useful to make a small donation using PayPal (total donation so far: $30). I am not trying to profiteer from this! Once I recover my cost (target donation: $300), I will make it known to the whole world through this web site, and you folks can go back to your old ways. :-)

30 July 2003: Marcus' mirror should be up. Please email me if you find any other problems with the mirrors.

29 July 2003: OK, it appears that there is some problems with "ubcd.zip" on the first mirror site. I am trying to sort that out with Marcus. Meanwhile, I have added another mirror site for downloads.

29 July 2003: Thanks to Marcus Widén, we have our first mirror site! From the emails I have been receiving, there should be more mirror sites coming soon. Thanks for all the support so far!

28 July 2003: I am in the process of getting some mirror sites for the ISO images, so hopefully download will be restored soon. Please check back again later, or sign up with the mailing list to receive notification when download is available again.

27 July 2003: I got the shock of my life when Lockergnome featured the Ultimate Boot CD on 23 July 2003, and suddenly the download traffic spiked like crazy! Within a couple of days, I was clocking up hundreds of dollars in bandwidth, which I can no longer afford as a hobby project. I am serious! My hosting company charges me $12 per extra GB, and last I checked, I owe them over $300! Hence, I have decided to disable the download until I can figure out what to do. If any of you are willing to mirror the files for me, I will be extremely grateful. Otherwise, the download stays closed until I become as rich as Bill Gates. :-) Sorry about that folks.

Rejected suggestions

I get a lot of suggestions on what to add to the Ultimate Boot CD. These suggestions would normally get into the CD, unless they fall into one of the following categories:

• Commercial software. This is a no-brainer. Commercial software such as Ghost or Partition Magic will simply not make it into the CD for obvious reasons.
• Configuration-specific boot disks. For example, it would not be possible to add a boot disk that will load the driver from ABC CD writer and XYZ network card. Out of the millions of users out there, probably only a handful will benefit from such a boot disk. It will make more sense to follow the customization instructions to add the boot disk to your personal Ultimate Boot CD.
• Incompatible software. For reasons which I still don't fully understand, some tools will work fine when boot from the physical floppy disk, but will choke when boot from the virtual floppy disk created by MemDisk.

The list below contains the suggestions that did not make it into the Ultimate Boot CD, largely because I have found them to be incompatible with the virtual floppy disk created by MemDisk, unless stated otherwise. Of course, if you can find workarounds for getting any of these tools to work with MemDisk, please email me so that I can add them to the CD.

• SeaTools Desktop version 2.00.09. Seagate has a new version of their diagnostic tool out, but I couldn't get it to boot properly when I put everything in a 2.88MB floppy image.

Contact us

If you think there are other free tools that could be included with the Ultimate Boot CD, we would love to hear from you! Please send an email to victor@ultimatebootcd.com.

Acknowledgments

The Ultimate Boot CD would not have been possible without Boot Scriptor, which is in turn dependent on SysLinux and MemDisk.

Useful links

• USB driver for DOS
• Another USB driver for DOS
• Tons of network drivers for DOS
• Use information on working with F-Prot
• Automates the task of getting anti-virus software onto floppy disks
• Create Win98 boot disks
• Virtual floppy disk driver
• Freeware program for creating/writing floppy disk images