greatest bootable maintenance disk

[aa1234779]

Hiren's boot cd 15.1 would probably first come to mind.

Restored Edition V 2.0 by proteus made it sooo much better.

There are also many linux distro live cds out there that are pretty good..

What are yours?

[Ahmad]

I have been using Hiren's BootCD since version 8 and I love it so much.
It's more than enough for me, so I didn't think of changing it.

[The Nawab]

yep! I'm With Ahmad!

[humbert]

Hiren's boot cd 15.1 would probably first come to mind.
Restored Edition V 2.0 by proteus made it sooo much better.
There are also many linux distro live cds out there that are pretty good..

Yes, Hirens is awesome. One thing, though. In Proteus v2.0 I've noticed that only the stuff on Mini-Windows XP works OK. All the other Dos-based stuff just doesn't load as well as Mini Windows 7. Even so, the stuff on Mini-XP is more than enough to make it awesome.

Regarding Linux based bootup CD's, I love Pmagic (I think that's Parted Magic but not sure). In any case, this thing brings with it all kinds of very useful utilities, Gparted being just one of them.

[Ahmad]

Yes, Hirens is awesome. One thing, though. In Proteus v2.0 I've noticed that only the stuff on Mini-Windows XP works OK. All the other Dos-based stuff just doesn't load as well as Mini Windows 7. Even so, the stuff on Mini-XP is more than enough to make it awesome.

I've noticed your problem on my cousin's new i3 Gigabyte H61 computer with the latest version of Hiren's BootCD 15.1, DOS stuff doesn't work as well as Mini 7. However, Mini XP runs very well.
But I've also Hiren's BootCD version 10.5, so I put it on a flash drive and try it on this new computer and all worked well including DOS stuff. Unfortunately, there is no Mini7 to try.

You may be surprised when I tell you that my 7 years old computer runs all very well [Thanks God for that]. 

[humbert]

I've noticed your problem on my cousin's new i3 Gigabyte H61 computer with the latest version of Hiren's BootCD 15.1, DOS stuff doesn't work as well as Mini 7. However, Mini XP runs very well.
But I've also Hiren's BootCD version 10.5, so I put it on a flash drive and try it on this new computer and all worked well including DOS stuff. Unfortunately, there is no Mini7 to try.

When you ran the test and saw that the DOS stuff didn't work, was this on the standard freeware Hirens 15.1 or on Proteus' v2.0 release? I don't know why I keep thinking this problem didn't begin with Proteus. The good part is the fact that, as you say Mini XP runs like a champ and has so many utilities that the DOS stuff isn't even needed. And of course I've never seen Mini-7 run at all on any version nor any computer.

You may be surprised when I tell you that my 7 years old computer runs all very well [Thanks God for that]. 

The simple fact that a computer is old doesn't mean that it won't run well. It's all a simple matter of running both software and hardware that are much newer and require more modern systems, and of course getting add-on hardware for an old computer is next to impossible. To analogize, here in America television has gone entirely digital, meaning that only newer, digital ready TV's can work. If someone still has an ancient analog square TV, it will still work perfectly - but not with the newer signals. Even if you install a digital to analog converter, it won't look anywhere near as good as a newer TV.

[Ahmad]

When you ran the test and saw that the DOS stuff didn't work, was this on the standard freeware Hirens 15.1 or on Proteus' v2.0 release?

I ran the test on the standard freeware Hiren's 15.1 put on a flash drive.
For me, after the integration of Mini XP in Hiren's, I rarely use DOS tools.

[aa1234779]

which dos stuff doesn't work on restored edition?

[Ahmad]

which dos stuff doesn't work on restored edition?

DOS tools can't be loaded on some motherboards, and the same works on mine.
So there is no defect in the edition because all things work well on my computer but I noticed that DOS tools and Mini Windows 7 can't work on my cousin's new motherboard and I don't know why. At the same time Mini XP works well !!

[humbert]

DOS tools can't be loaded on some motherboards, and the same works on mine.
So there is no defect in the edition because all things work well on my computer but I noticed that DOS tools and Mini Windows 7 can't work on my cousin's new motherboard and I don't know why. At the same time Mini XP works well !!

You're absolutely correct. Mini XP is so loaded with tools that I'd even go as far as to throw the DOS part out entirely. This is especially true in Proteus 2.0 edition. The only thing is that some people such as myself are just picky - it bothers us to see all that on the menu and not have it work.