Latest news

For those of you interested in a Windows version of the Ultimate Boot CD, you might want to check out this project initiated by Ben Burrows.

31 May 2004: A bug has been found in cdshell.ini. Line 532 needs to be changed from:

    if ($lastKey == key[f6)); then diskemu /images/docmem1.img

(notice the double close bracket after 'f6') to:

    if ($lastKey == key[f6]); then diskemu /images/docmem1.img

I will be releasing V2.31 tonight to correct this bug, but if you don't want to download the whole shabang again, simply correct cdshell.ini and recreate the CD using mkisofs.

30 May 2004: After a long break, Ultimate Boot CD Ver 2.3 is finally ready for download! Utilities added are CPUBurn, FIPS, GAG, PC INSPECTOR e-maxx and clone maxx, Arachne WWW Browser, Intel Process Frequency ID Utility, Active@ Partition Recovery, Samsung Disk Manager and various DOS stuff contributed by users. Utilities updated are MemTest86, TestDisk, RIP, F-Prot, McAfee, PowerMax, SPFDisk, DBAN, DFT, IBM/Hitachi Feature Tool, AIDA16, Seagate DiscWizard, g4u, MemTest86+, Fujitsu Diagnostic Tools, Htuil, Offline NT Password & Registry Editor and NSSI. The problems with Western Digital's DLG Diagnostic V4.x and V5.x were also fixed so that they will run on older machines. Special thanks to Adrian Stanciu for contributing the CPUBurn boot disk. Have fun!

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

Ultimate Boot CD Ver 2.31

	Download types	Size	MD5
	ISO image	122MB	n/a
	Self-extracting EXE Note: Please download this version if you are running Windows because it is compressed using 7Zip and is a good 10MB smaller than the ZIP version.	51MB	n/a
	Plain old ZIP	61MB	n/a

	Sponsor	Version	Status
	Jimmy Hilley	2.3
	www.fulminati.org	2.3
	tff2	2.3
	TheBusinessTuner.com	2.3
	Bastian Moliusis	2.3
	Pascal Rebsamen	2.3
EXE ISO ISO MD5 ZIP	PlanetMirror.com	2.3
	MajorGeeks.com	2.21
	SweClockers.com	2.21
	René Wagner	2.21
	Stefano Bianchini Note: There is a bandwidth limitation of 4K/s per user for a maximum of 4 user. Aggressive download managers (GetRight, Download 4x etc) are useless, and will be rejected by the server.	2.21
	Marco Bocola	2.21
ZIP ISO ISO MD5	Stefani Patricia Banerian	2.21
	Rob G. Healey	2.21
	Tim Vanlint Note: This mirror has limited bandwidth, and will be taken down if the quota for the month is exceeded.	2.21
	MrBass.org	2.21
	CyberRax	2.21
	Suramya Tomar Note: This mirror is provided courtesy of http://www.suramya.com/.	2.21
	P.K. Avritt	2.21
	VB	2.21
ISO ISO MD5 ZIP	FileArena.net	2.21
	Stephan Ollivier	2.21
	pcinfo4u.net	2.21

Description	Contributor	Version		Download	Size
Generic CDR label in JPEG format	Contributed by Audun Kristoffersen. Updated to V2.2 by Peter Schoeltzel.	Ver 2.2		jpeg_lbl.zip	351KB
Generic CDR label in JPEG format	Contributed by Jens Benecke	Ver 2.1		jpeg_lbl4.zip	161KB
Generic Mini CDR label in JPEG format	Contributed by Jens Benecke	Ver 2.21		jpeg_lbl2.zip	246KB
CDR label for Neato's MediaFACE II	Contributed by Jim Allen; Updated by Ben Burrows.	Ver 2.1		neato_lbl.zip	21.8KB

Note: Steve Shank informed me that recent IE updates may block cookies from PayPal when you click on the above button, resulting in an error message from PayPal. You may resolve this problem by going into Tools... Internet Options... Privacy.. Edit, then add paypal.com as being able to set cookies regardless of security settings. Alternatively, you may log into PayPal directly and send money to victor@ultimatebootcd.com. Thanks!

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, George Barnes, Mark Lomax, Nicolas C. Agache, Benjamin Burrows, Edward Ceppa, Jonathan March, Marc Couture, Eric George, David Hays, Guennadi Momot, Michel Oversteyns, Eric Wood, Brent Midwood, Marc Bauer, Sergey Ignatchenko, Alvera Black, A. H. Gray, Ensar Turan, Thomas Brandl, Mark Mahabir, Michel Oversteyns, Gerard J Rolape, Brandon Eubank, Jessica Truax, Alden Myers, Neil Slatinsky, Scott Slattery, Mike Watts, Earl Livering, Christoph Hoffmann, Lawrence Rayment, Brad Schneider, Gregory Watson, Ross Elbling, James Pryor, Edward Handy, Leonardo Samory, Jean-Marc Coursimault, Paul Schultz, Kyle Degraaf, David Gray, Puget Custom Computers, Mark Murphy, John Wells, Felton Green, David McMichael, Jim Brook, Peter Herngaard, Charles Brown, Craig Grant, Jose Pinheiro Carvalho, Jose Pinheiro Carvalho, Michael Pechner, Simon Clark, Kay Amemiya, R. V. Goodier, WenChin Yuan, Terry Lucas, Mark Rideout, Scott Garfinkle, Rod Apeldoorn, Paul Taylor, Markus Weis, Steven Shank, Mark Lindemann, Sidney Johnson, Business Tuner, Roulet Thibault, Richard Weiner.

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

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:

Ben Burrows		Will deliver to US only for US$8 per CD. Shipping included. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Ben Burrows, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
Ben Burrows		Will deliver internationally for US$11 per CD. Shipping included. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Ben Burrows, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
		Will deliver to Australia and New Zealand for AUS$10 per CD. Other countries by negotiation.
		Will deliver to UK and Europe for £10 per CD.
		Will deliver to UK only. Send blank CD and return postage/packing. Email Mark Amos for posting address.
		Will deliver to United States only for US$10 per CD. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Jared Davis, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
		Willing to ship CD to anywhere in the Europe for 10 pounds sterling. Rest of world 15 pounds sterling. Payment through PayPal.
		Will deliver to Canada only for $10 per CD. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Roger Virgo, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
Flashware Solutions		Will deliver to Australia only for $10 per CD.
		Will deliver to US only for $11 per CD.
	Website	Will deliver to UK only for £2 per CD with the latest virus definitions. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Alan, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
		Will deliver to Poland for $9 per CD. Fast shipping via Poczta Polska prioritaire mail.
		Will deliver to Poland for $8 per CD. Fast shipping via Poczta Polska prioritaire mail.
		Will deliver worldwide for 10 euros per CD. Price includes shipping. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Pascal Debuyst, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
		Will burn a UBCD for anyone in the US who sends me a blank CD in a prepaid mailer. I find that saved AOL Promo CD packs are great for this.
		Will deliver worldwide for $10 per CD.
		Will deliver to US only for $7.99. Shipping and handling included. Disclaimer: The PayPal "Buy Now" button on the left belongs to Chad Harmon, and any business transactions initiated by clicking on that button will be strictly between you and him.
		Will deliver to South Africa for only R25 per CD, postage excluded. Willing to deliver to Africa for only $10 per CD, postage excluded. Please contact me via email.
		Will deliver to US only for US$3.42 per CD plus shipping and handling. Payment through OhioBarter.org. Credit, PayPal, E-Gold, Money Order .

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!

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?

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?

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: My computer does not have the option of booting from CD in the BIOS. How can I use the Ultimate Boot CD?

[Contributed by Jim Goodman] Download Smart Boot Manager from http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/ and install it on a floppy disk. Set your bios to boot from floppy. After the floppy boots you will be able to boot from any drive that is connected to the computer, including the CD.

Question: I have a new Opteron system and it seems to have problems with your Ultimate Boot CD. I can boot the Windows XP setup CD, and the UBCD CD I made boots in a Pentium box, but it won't boot in my new Opteron box. Is there any way to debug what is going wrong?

[Contributed by Darrell Wiebesick] I have experience similar problems (not with the UBCD) with other systems that would boot certain CDs and not others. It has always been the CDROM drive. I suspect that the laser cannot properly focus on the CD. I would temporarily replace the CDROM drive to confirm that it is not some other hardware issue.

Question: What are the restrictions on using long filenames on the CD?

Question: I am customizing my version of UBCD, and as I was editing the bootscript.ini file I noticed that on the part where you add keystroke information for your img file, what should I use: memdisk or diskemu?

I usually try memdisk first because it is faster (the entire image is stored and accessed from memory). However, if that fails, use diskemu (the image is accessed from CD instead).

Question: I have F-Prot (DOS) always with latest definitions on my PC. Now do I create an image of this, to be included on my UBCD?

The easiest way is use a program like WinImage to view the F-Prot image file (fprot.img) on UBCD. You will see a file called files.zip within the image. Copy it to your harddisk, then use WinZip to view the zip file. You will see it contains the entire F-Prot distribution. Replace the virus definition files with your latest. Then, copy the updated files.zip to the F-Prot image file.

Question: I was getting a bunch of "non-system disk or disk error" messages when I was trying to boot certain DOS floppy images. What's wrong?

For certain machines, you need to enable the floppy drive in the BIOS for memdisk to work properly. For these machines, if you set the floppy drive in the BIOS to "None", you will get the above error message.

Question: I don't have any floppy drive on my PC to be able to make images of GHOST.exe and other programs in the support folder which I use a lot at work. Any ideas?

You can use VFD. It's a virtual floppy disk driver, but only works under Win2K and above.

Question: Where do I get disk images > 2.88MB?

You can try this site. Anyone with instructions on how to create these things from scratch, please drop me an email.

Question: How can I add a two-disk utility such as Partition Magic to UBCD?

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. Neither can it contain the latest virus definition files. This section talks about how to create your own customized Ultimate Boot CD, tailored to your specific needs.

First, 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).

Then, copy all the files on the UBCD to a directory on your harddisk such as c:\ubcd. If you wish, you can directly extract the files from the ISO image using a tool such as WinISO or Daemon Tools.

You should now have a directory structure that looks like:

c:\ubcd\
  boot\
    cdsh.bin
    loader.bin
    cdshw.com
    cdshell.ini
    modules\
      [Various .csm files]
      memdisk
  docs\
  dosapps\
  freesco\
  images\
    [Various .img files]
  licenses\
  scsi\
  tools\
  ubcd\
  autorun.inf
  ubcd.ico

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 Floppy Image (you need to goto "Settings", and select "Create compatible IMG files").

Place your personal floppy disk images under c:\ubcd\images. Then edit c:\ubcd\boot\cdshell.ini to add each floppy disk image and its activation keystroke to the final ISO image. Use the existing sections as reference. If you need more information, please refer to the CDShell documentation.

New! You can now place your DOS-based programs under dosapps. To access them, either create a boot disk based on McAfee or F-Prot VirusScan, or run the FreeDOS boot disk and execute the program from the CD directly.

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

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

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

Note #1: 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.

Note #2: If you are still having problems, maybe you'd like to use this DOS batch file or this Linux shell file (only if you are running Linux) instead. These files were kindly contributed by Scott D. Wares.

Note #3: For you Java fans, you might like to try out this automatic mechanism for building cdshell.ini, contributed by Raoul Volfoni. It relies on Ant and Velocity.

Related stuff

• How to add Knoppix to UBCD (Contributed by Adrian Stanciu)
• How to add any Linux-based CD to UBCD (Contributed by Adrian Stanciu)
• UBCD customization guide in German (Contributed by Mike Kuketz)
• French version of cdshell.ini (Contributed by Kall Award)

What users say about Ultimate Boot CD

• You've done a great job making Ultimate Boot CD! It's almost perfect! - Øystein Sund
• We build custom computers, and are constantly in need of various boot disks to test our machines. The Ultimate Boot CD has definitely been the single most useful CD we have! Instead of making dozens of boot CDs (or taking the time to make our own boot compilation CD), we simply downloaded UBCD, and now always have at least a half dozen of these CDs floating around our shop. We are very appreciative of the time you have put into creating this tool. THANK YOU for such a great resource! - Jon Bach, Owner, Puget Custom Computers
• Your CD saved me, like so many others, from a lot of needless grief. Symantec Ghost tanked my NTFS boot drive, replacing it with it's own FAT boot drive on a machine running mission critical apps. Symantec support sent me a message, "We can get to you in about a week." I would have been toast had I not found your CD which enabled me to get everything back in order. - Mario Suriani

More feedback

Version history

Rejections

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.

X-Files

From time to time, I receive queries from users that defy all explanation. I am listing them here and hoping that someone out there can shed some light on these mysteries.

• "I was unable to boot on IBM ThinkCenter 8183, NetVista old and new generation but the same CD works with other computers, as if the BIOS can't find the CD boot sector. I tried many things: a CD with just the original cdshell (works), then with just the /boot folder (works), so I tried to add other folders. The CD didn't boot when I add /docs. Why?" - Pellegrino Sylvain

Wish list

These are items that I hope some users/gurus can contribute to:

• Instructions for running UBCD from a USB flash drive. This could be the link to an existing site, or just plain text. There have been rising interest on this topic, but no answers at the moment.

Contact us

To suggest free tools that could be included with the Ultimate Boot CD, please send an email to ubcd-suggest@lists.sourceforge.net.

If you encounter a problem with the Ultimate Boot CD, please send an email to ubcd-support@lists.sourceforge.net.

Finally, if you wish to shower lavish praise upon the author, email victor@ultimatebootcd.com. :-)

Acknowledgments

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

I am also like to thank the following project volunteers for their contributions:

• Scott D. Wares, for taking time to maintain the Ultimate Boot CD documentation, as well as initiate the SourceForge project.
• SebastienG, who is a one-man update tracking machine! He is frequently the first to notify me of updates to applications on the Ultimate Boot CD.
• Adrian Stanciu, for contributing the CPUBurn boot disk and instructions for adding Knoppix to the UBCD.

Useful links

USB driver for DOS
• Another USB driver 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
• Creating a multi-boot DVD
• Windows MD5 utility
• MBCD - MultiBootCD
• Large disk images > 2.88MB
• Swedish guide for UBCD
• How to put all versions of Windows into a single bootable CD.