Wow Ultimate Boot CD 4

[Rich-M]

I had an interesting one this week and you know I have been carrying around the UCBD4 for months without realizing what a great product it really is.
I went to a clients house to teach her Quicken, a client I am at almost every 2 months for one reason or another and her Gateway P4 1 gb ram was running like a complete snail. When I looked further Sas couldn't update, Avg was blown out but I didn't really see any known spyware programs onboard.

I booted into safe mode to see if I could update Sas and still no and I removed some lightweight questionable programs from Add/Remove Programs but still it was all messed up and running like a turtle.

I decide to boot to XP cd and run checkdisk. It booted fine into Recovery Console and began to run chkdsk /r and got up to 75% and then went back to 50%. I have seen this before but never really understood what it was all about. Slowly it crept back to 72% and then slid back again to 50% and this time was moving so slow I thought it would take forever.

I had found that some grandchildren were on it over the weekend and it had been slowing down for days now. I decided to try the UBCD4 disk I have had for months and never used. It booted up chose disk tools and then checkdisk and it ran straight through 5 cycles completed and the pc ran great again.

I haven't a clue what the difference was though it had to have something to do with the fact it was working from a linux window which had it's own OS contained and that has to have lent stability to the operation. I am sold for now as this is the way I will run checkdisk in the future, I'm impressed.
http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm

[Goku]

Yes Rich. I have never tried UBCD myself, never needed it, but it is a must have tool with the amount of applications and utilities it has. Anyways, regarding the PC in question, what OS was your client running. XP, I hazard a guess.

-- Goku

[Scotty]

I had to use UBD on a friends hard drive that was unbootable. Great tool.

[Rich-M]

Yes Rich. I have never tried UBCD myself, never needed it, but it is a must have tool with the amount of applications and utilities it has. Anyways, regarding the PC in question, what OS was your client running. XP, I hazard a guess.

-- Goku
You are correct XP Home.

[Goku]

You are correct XP Home.
I guess the Windows XP Check Disk utility was recovering from errors Rich and that is why wherever it found errors, it would repair it and revert back to 50%. Of course, I do not know what might be the cause for its low scanning speed. If you get another case like that, you might want to try Guided Help too.

How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265)

I believe that UBCD also has formatting tools, right? I will use them the next time I want to erase my hard drive. Try Guided Help and let me know how you find it. :)

-- Goku

[Rich-M]

I guess the Windows XP Check Disk utility was recovering from errors Rich and that is why wherever it found errors, it would repair it and revert back to 50%. Of course, I do not know what might be the cause for its low scanning speed. If you get another case like that, you might want to try Guided Help too.

How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265)

I believe that UBCD also has formatting tools, right? I will use them the next time I want to erase my hard drive. Try Guided Help and let me know how you find it. :)

-- Goku

No Goku, my whole point it next time I want to run checkdisk on a no n booting system I will run UBCD4. I am guessing the reason it ran so smoothly is it has it's own OS to make it do so whereas the other way, there is at best a "cracked" OS running underneath. It makes so much sense I just never thought about it.

[Rich-M]

Well very interesting as I just got a call from the client and problems are starting all over again. I originally thought I replaced her hard drive 2 years ago and just now checked and I did not, it is original. Here again is another example of trying to prolong the life of what today is such inexpensive hardware, and probably wasting more billable hours on a repair that lasted 4 days and in the long run cost her more money. I think I am done trying to prop up old hardware that is failing. I never do it for me why would I do it for a client anyway?
The upshot is UBCD4 made the drive cloneable which is a great service so now I will get her data off and she wants a new pcwhich I am building her, as we have been bandaiding this "sick" Gateway for several years now and it's costing her a fortune, and she has been wanting a custom build for a while.