Create A Windows Boot CD

....feels familiar?

If you need to create a Windows XP boot CD (or one for Vista, 95/98, or Windows 7), you are in good company.

An estimated 3,000 Windows users daily are faced with the problem of booting and repairing a Windows system which doesn't work properly.

This can be caused by many reasons - a corrupt MBR (Master Boot Record) or partition table, a damaged system file, incorrect drivers, and lots more.

Perhaps you have an NTLDR error when booting, or some system32 file got damaged by a corrupt cluster on the HD, and all you see is a cryptic error message.

However, booting Windows when it doesn't want to boot by itself, is a harder problem than one would think.

It is a very well known fact that Windows does not exactly come with effective self-repair and booting tools.

If you ever tried using the Windows Recovery Console, or the repair feature of Windows installation CDs, you know what I'm talking about. It is ridiculous that they even call that a 'recovery tool'...

Yes, an original Windows installation CD can help you reinstall your whole system, but... do you want that? My bet is, not really.

It's not much fun to reinstall every single one of your programs and customize everything the way you like it from zero all over again.

Also, perhaps you have an OEM PC or laptop, and then chances are you don't even have an installation CD, rather that measly OEM Windows recovery CD that you get with most brand notebooks such as Toshiba, HP, Sony etc, which is totally useless.

Hm, what else can I do?

you might ask.

In fact, the crappy built-in Windows recovery features are not the end-all-be-all.

Nowadays, there are some very powerful third party tools which make booting and repairing Windows a breeze.

The industry leader in the Windows boot CD market is Spotmau Inc., a Houston-based company which produces a universal Windows boot CD called PowerSuite.

It's called 'Suite' because it consists not just of a boot CD, but includes many other helper tools which are specifically created for the situation when you need to boot and recover Windows XP or Vista.

The PowerSuite is now in its 4th year (the new 2010 version being released just a few weeks ago, after 2009, 2008, and2007) and has firmly established itself as the best Windows boot CD, with lots of features and quite easy to use even for inexperienced Windows users.

When you need a Windows boot CD, the most useful part of it is the BootCare Kit, which allows to boot pretty much any Windows PC and repair the Windows installation.

I have tried it with 4 different Windows PCs, including two laptops, HP, and Toshiba, and it worked each time.

It's also very effective for repairing the important stuff: the MBR, the disk partition table, Windows drivers and filesystem, NTLDR issues, etc.

Different from older Windows versions, you don't need to mess around with drivers for the CD or DVD drive either - it's all plug and play in the good sense of the word.

Another big plus is that you don't even need to wait for the CD to be mailed to you, as with most other similar products.

Spotmau offers a direct download model, where you get the boot CD image immediately and only need to burn it with any burning program (like Nero for example).

This is quite handy when you need to fix your Windows troubles fast and can't wait for days (those who prefer to have an official CD mailed to them can get it too for a fee of $4.75).

Once you boot from the CD, there is a nice graphic wizard offering a choice of Windows recovery tools. You can recover the MBR or the partition table with one click, fix the registry, or restore deleted system files directly from CD:

This works really well if you have a backup copy of your MBR or Windows system directory. "But I don't have one, otherwise I wouldn't be here!" - you are probably saying right now. No need to panic. BootCare can actually fix your MBR, DPT, and system32 data even when you don't have any backups at all. Don't ask me how they do it though - if I knew, I'd be selling a Windows recovery CD as well :-)

And this isn't everything BootCare can do. It can also find and fix reasons for blue screen errors, discover and replace missing system files, and even fix the registry - all after booting from the PowerSuite CD.

Another cool thing that you get in the suite is the data rescue package. This is a powerful tool for recovering data off a crashed, damaged, or otherwise inaccessible Windows system disk. Again, all you need to do is boot from the Suite CD and you immediately get a convenient wizard:

where you can pick and copy any data from the Windows hard disk to another source like a different hard drive, an USB drive, or a flash card. All this works with any kind of filesystem - be it NTFS of Windows XP/Vista/7, or the old FAT32/16 of Windows 95-98.

This tool can actually even restore files that you have deleted from the Windows recycle bin - black magic, I say!

The WinCare part of the Suite also includes a complete and easy to use backup/restore kit (they call it Clone Genius). What it does is basically mirror complete directories, partitions, or hard drives to any destination (like another HD, DVD-R/RW, image file, USB drive, FireWire, etc) and then restore it completely if you need it - when the original data has been deleted or the partition is damaged:

Another task that the Suite manages real well is hard disk and partition administration. The Partition Genius tool, a part of the WinCare package, has functions almost on par with partitioning tool giant Partition Magic. It can create, delete, activate, format, resize, split, and merge partitions, convert them between different filesystem types, display individual sectors, scan for bad sectors and mark them not to be used, backup and restore the partition table, and even more. It takes a while just to list all the functions. All this is also possible through an intuitive and nice interface:

Beside these tools, the PowerSuite has a good deal more - for example, a Windows "360 degree" Health Check tool, utilities for decluttering your registry and speeding up Windows, removing unwanted toolbars, pop-ups, and other adware.

Or a complete solution for retrieving lost passwords - from Windows administrator and user passwords to Outlook, Yahoo, MS Office, and lots of other programs.

Or a personal privacy solution which can strongly encrypt all your private files (with a military degree encryption) so that not even the FBI can read them.

And this is still far from all of its features.

All in all...

this is a boot CD literally jammed full with features.

It is very useful for booting and recovering any Windows version, but it can do much, much more than that.

Compared to painstakingly trying to create a Windows boot CD by hand, and using the pathetic built-in Windows recovery tools, it's a whole different world.

It's not even funny how much easier it is to boot and recover Windows when using this CD.

If you feel that you would rather not waste many hours (or maybe days) of your time trying to make a XP/Vista/2000/95-98 Windows boot CD that works, and would rather just get the full power of the boot CD industry behemoth immediately at your disposal...