The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) is a huge collection of system diagnostic and recovery tools that are conveniently arranged on a single CD. These tools work on any Intel-compatible PC. Since the CD is bootable, it doesn’t matter what operating system(s) may be installed on the PC. Indeed, UBCD comes in handiest when the normal operating system refuses to boot.

You Name It: The current version of UBCD contains 121 tools, divided into 21 categories, as follows. Each tool runs in isolation, as if it were the only tool on the CD (just as if the tool were on its own floppy disk). A master menu program boots up first. It lets you choose the tool you want to run, and then it boots that tool. (To run another tool, simply reboot and go through the main menu again.)

• CPU Tests
• Memory Tests
• Peripherals Tools
• CPU Information
• System Information
• Benchmark Tools
• BIOS Tools
• Hard Disk Installation Tools
• Hard Disk Diagnostic Tools
• Hard Disk Device Management Tools
• Hard Disk Wiping Tools
• Hard Disk Cloning Tools
• Hard Disk Low-Level Editing Tools
• Partition Tools
• Boot Managers
• File Tools
• NTFS Tools
• Anti-Virus/Malware Tools
• Network Tools
• DOS Boot Disks
• Linux Boot Disks

Downloading: The UBCD is free for the taking. It’s available on a number of different mirror sites. (See link, below.)

Burning the CD: The UBCD comes in the form of an ISO image (compressed as either a zip file, or a self extracting archive). You need CD burning software that can create a CD based on an ISO image. If you don’t know what an ISO image is, or how to burn it to a CD, don’t worry. The second question in the UBCD FAQ (http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/faq.html) tells you exactly how to do it using CD burning software that you may already have installed, or if not, gives step-by-step instructions for using some of the freeware programs that are available.

BIOS Settings: In order to boot from a CD, your BIOS configuration must be set to allow it. The UBCD FAQ has this topic covered as well. Newer machines also allow booting from a USB device, which is an option here.

Ultimate Boot CD

Latest Version: 4.1.1
Platform: Any Intel-compatible PC
Author: Charles Appel
Price: Free (FOSS)
Download Link: ubcd.sourceforge.net (choose a mirror site from there).

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Read more: Windows, Linux