When your computer has a cold or even a sniffle, Hiren's BootCD can make an all in one house call. This Dos Bootable CD hosts the most extensive FREE collection of repair and recovery software in the world. It can even operate when your operating system will not function.
Turn your head and cough
Each program has its own task, including antivirus software, partitioning agents, registry cleaners, spyware removal, system performance benchmarks, disk cloning and imaging tools, data recovery tools, MBR tools, BIOS tools, and other various computer problem solvers. All of the programs are zipped down for small and simple storage. Hiren's size is only 95.37 MB and works on the following operating systems: 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/Vista. You can put Hiren on any sort of storageable device, including a CD, a USB, or even your hard drive on your desktop.
Why?
Computers are never as fast as when they are fresh from purchase or reformat, but not every little bug requires the day project of a reformat when you can run one of Hiren’s programs in only a few minutes. The program is free, and anyone who surfs the net is susceptible to millions of spyware, viruses, and Trojans, that slow your computer down. Hiren can safely remove almost anything, or at least identify problems.
User Friendly
A tool is NOT only as good as its master. The user friendliness of Hiren makes even the complete computer fool still able to wield a bastard sword, with only the feeling of picking up a dagger. All you have to know how to do is Google, “Download Hiren’s BootCD 9.5,” download it, and open the ready-to-go antibody. A small gray box will open with two options, click Browse CD. You’ll see the complete list of software in sub categories, your only problem will be in deciding what program you need to run. If you are clueless, start with cleaners. Spybot, Ad-aware, HijackThis, and registry cleaners are the best way to get rid of pesky memory/CPU/RAM stealers. Quick results will follow.
A brief warning. Do not delete registries carelessly, you may cause fatal runtime errors. Only delete what you can safely identity. HijackThis also hosts a forum where you can post a copy of your registry and they will do the identifying for you if necessary.
Legality?
“Even though Hiren's Boot CD contains free software and abandonware, which are still copyrighted, from the DOS era, it also contains some unlicensed software; therefore, Hiren's Boot CD is considered warez. This may make the disc illegal in some jurisdictions.” (Wiki) You should be able to download a free copy of Hiren’s from one of multiple websites. I got mine from The Pirate Bay’s torrent search engine. Current version of Hiren’s BootCD is 9.5
Here are some of the more notable programs from the extensive list of software, some programs do similar tasks but use different UI’s, or are better for particular operating systems.
- Partition Magic Pro 8.05 (There are many more partition tools)
- Disk Clone Tools
- McAfee Antivirus 4.4.50 and F-Prot Antivirus 3.16f
- Recovery tools up the wazzoo, Active Partition Recovery 3.0 (recovers deleted partitions), Active Uneraser 3.0 (recovers deleted files), Lost & Found 1.06
- Testing tools galore, System Speed Test 4.78, PC-Check 6.5, PC Doctor 2004
- Hard Disk Tools, HDD Regenerator 1.51, Norton Disk Doctor 2002
- System Information Tools
- BIOS / CMOS Tools
- MultiMedia Tools
- Password Tools, Active Password Changer 3.0.420 (if you can’t remember a password, this is your tool)
- NTFS (FileSystems) Tools
- Windows Tools (Most extensive available software), SpaceMonger 1.4, MemTest 1.0, Autoruns 9.13, and my personal favorite HijackThis 2.0.2 – a program that removes hijacking programs.
- From the “Other category”, Ghost Walker 2003.793 – a utility that changes the security ID (SID) for Windows NT, 2000 and XP
- Many DOS programs
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiren's_Boot_CD
http://www.9down.com/Hiren-s-BootCD-9-5-23765/
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
http://soft.softoogle.com/ap/hiren-s-bootcd-download-6916.shtml