Some Good Tools to Have Out Back

As I move towards a dual boot with Ubuntu I have been collecting all my recovery tools together and have found some new ones.
First, check out BartPE, a live CD windows environment that runs off a bootable cd so that you can fix any problem that might pop up. I added the firefox plugin so that I could get on the internet and find help if needed. It's pretty easy to use and I built one right away, saving it to an ISO file first and then using that in a virtual machine to test it out. Very impressive and I am sure it will be very useful.
I have used Hiren's Boot alot, as well, which I got off a torrent site. I always keep a copy of that handy as well.
Burn Puppy to a cd, too. That comes in handy when things go bad.
Finally, I found a very handy little tool called MBRfix (look about halfway down the list). When working with dual boots I have found the biggest problem arises with screwing up the Master Boot Record. It is scary as hell to see that 'no OS found' message come up, but it is really a very simple fix. Hiren's Boot contains this utility, but I downloaded it put it on a floppy, then ran it from the floppy to make a copy of my current MBR. Heres how:
1. Format a floppy and see if your drive still works! If it doesn't, or you don't have one, I am sure it will work off a cd.
2. Download MBRfix and unzip it to the floppy.
3. Open up a Command Prompt and type cd A:\
4. Your floppy should come on as you change to this directory. To make sure the program is there type 'dir' and you should see mbrfix.exe. If not then cd mbrfix to get into the mbrfix directory and type dir to make sure it's there.
5. Now to back up your current MBR type:
mbrfix /drive 0 savembr mbr
where drive 0 (that is a number zero) is the drive your windows os is on and mbr is the name of the file that will be created that contains your MBR
6. Now type dir again and you should see a file titled mbr.

All this is in the directions that comes with the program but I thought I would just demonstrate how easy it is and I was testing to see if it could be run from a floppy. This also demonstrates how easy and useful command line programs can be and why it is a good thing to start to get comfortable with the commandline - which is by coincidence going to be the subject of my next blog!!

Last but certainly not least is DriveImageXML, a new freeware backup utility that I am about to try, which has a plugin for BartPE. Making a full backup proved to be the smartest thing I ever did after my last disastrous attempt at dual booting. I learned a lot from that, though, and I will record all that here.

Got any tools you prefer? Let me know!