Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4WIN)

When it comes to administering and auditing installed machines, Windows users are a great disadvantage compared to their Linux peers. Almost every single Linux distribution ships as a live CD, along with a whole range of dedicated system tools, allowing the user to easily performance maintenance, backup, recovery, malware cleaning, and many other tasks on a broad range of computers, without depending on the host operating system to boot, work properly or cooperate.

Windows users have a more limited array of tools at their disposal, mainly because of the Microsoft licensing policy. Still, all is not lost. Windows users have two great tools at their disposal: BartPE and Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.

BartPE

BartPE is a Preinstalled Environment (PE) builder tools that allows users to create their own bootable versions of Windows. BartPE discs can be then used on Windows machines that cannot boot, have been hit by malware, for safe browsing and more.

UBCD4WIN

UBCD4WIN is a fat child of Bart's. UBCD4WIN is based on BartPE, but it adds lots of programs to the package, significantly enhancing the functionality of the live CD. While the basic BartPE disc will weigh only about 300MB at most, UBCD4WIN can be more than twice the size. The extras translate directly into dozens of excellent programs (plugins) included, programs that users would normally have to package by themselves in order to use with Bart. UBCD4WIN also has better hardware support. It contains a more aesthetically pleasing work environment (desktop), too.

I have talked about these two tools at some length before. For more details, please see my article: How to create a bootable live Windows CD.

Now, it's time to mention UBCD4WIN again. It's been 2 years since my last article. UBCD4WIN has since grown from version 3.1.1 to 3.22. This article covers the new, fresh changes that UBCD4WIN brings to the live Windows administration scene.

What is new?

Well, let's boot and see.

By default, UBCD4WIN (created with version 3.22) boots into a minimalistic desktop with only the Start button visible. If you're used to a nice shiny desktop wallpaper and lots of icons, you will not get them until you run the My info program.

But let's focus on the real deal - programs. BTW, you can find the full list at UBCD4WIN website, under List of Tools.

Applications

It seems as if the creators of UBCD4WIN maintain a secret telepathy link with me, or it may be that I happen to use the most sensible programs available for Windows, but the great majority of my favorites come included!

Browsers

First, you get the great Firefox and Opera browsers:

Imaging software

Then, if you wish to clone your operating system / partitions, DriveImageXML is included.

Additionally, you may add your own plugins. For instance, I added my own Acronis True Image 9, which allows me to manipulate Acronis backups and restores from the CD.

Furthermore, if you have missed in the first screenshot, TrueCrypt is also included, allowing to encrypt your files, partitions, drives, and even the operating system, as well as open and use existing TrueCrypt containers.

Administration tools

There are SO many programs, so I'm just showing off a tiny few.

Karen's LAN Monitor allows you to keep track of the traffic on your subnet. You can also load remote registries (including that of the local machine) for inspection, auditing or malware cleaning.

Then you have hard disk diagnostic tools, too. And if you ever get confused, a comprehensive help file explaining the majors and minors of the live CD.

More applications ...

Next, you may want to defrag your partitions or backup your drivers. Double Driver is an extremely convenient tools that allows you to grab the entire set of drivers for your machine and keep them somewhere safe in case you need them. Then, you can back them up to CD using Small CD-Writer (or several other burning tools). Auslogic Disk Defrag is a solid, efficient defragmenter.

Then, you get Foxit Reader for PDF files, IrfanView for quick image and picture editing, Putty for SSH tunneling, and the omni-potent Notepad++ for anything to do with text, scripts or code.

In addition to the simple Task Manager, you also get CurrProcess. And there's a virtual keyboard, too.

You can even connect to remote Linux machines using VNC:

Security applications

One of the sections that matters most to many Windows users is security. When booting from the live CD, the host operating system is dormant and fully exposed, and so are any potentially hidden rootkits, DLLs, files, folders, and whatnot. Disinfection from live CDs is a very simple affair.

If you're afraid to do it manually, then you have a broad range of programs, including AntiVir and AVG anti-virii, SuperAntiSpyware, McAfee Stinger, Spybot Search & Destroy, Rootkitty, and others.

Conclusion

UBCD4WIN is mighty toolbox. It is friendly and highly useful. It allows you to safely recover lost data in the case of a disaster, restore partitions, look for deleted files, fix the registry, clean malware, even access encrypted data, and communicate with remote machines using SSH or VNC.

While there's nothing revolutionary between version 3.0 and 3.22, the new changes are all good. UBCD4WIN has grown a bit in size, but the additions are excellent, lightweight and superbly versatile programs (IrfanView, Notepad++ to name just two).

For Windows users, this is a must. And even if you're a Linux guy, having a live CD specially dedicated to Microsoft machines, which you might need handle some day, certainly does not hurt.

Free PDF software that will make your life easier

This software will not solve all the problems you may be currently facing in this economic whatever, but it will surely help your computer usage become faster, smarter and prettier.

In this article, I will show you a collection of excellent applications that will help you use and manipulate your documents, all for free. You will learn about some pretty decent programs that allow you to print your documents in PDF format, convert your document to PDF format, convert website to PDFs, and more.

The article is mainly intended for Windows users.

So let us begin.

First, a couple of readers

Foxit Reader

Foxit is my favorite PDF software for Windows. It's light and lightning fast. It weighs only a few MB and loads in nanoseconds. In comparison, Acrobat Reader weighs well over 100MB, installs hundreds of registry keys and takes a bit loading. Furthermore, while Acrobat Reader is quite often prone to numerous vulnerabilities, Foxit Reader has remained blessedly safe.

You may also be interested in the older 1.3 version, which comes with no Javascript support, making it even more impregnable to possible exploits.

The latest Foxit version (3.0) includes an optional Foxit toolbar and AskMe.com homepage change, so be careful when you click Next, Next, Next.

Foxit Reader also has a portable version.

Sumatra PDF

Sumatra is a slim, lightweight PDF viewer for Windows. It can't get any simpler than that. It has no fancy functions; it merely shows you the document you want to see. It's superb for handling unknown documents or for carrying around on a USB stick. Indeed, Sumatra PDF also has a portable edition.

Now, let's talk about distillers

While you may associate the process of distilling with the creation of fine ale, in this here article, we're talking about printing.

OpenOffice 3

OpenOffice is an excellent office suite. It's free, it's powerful - and it will convert your documents into PDFs in just one mouse click. This is something the non-free Microsoft Office suite does not offer by default, so even if you don't really fancy using OpenOffice, because some of your peers might have problems with file formats or styling, you should consider having it your arsenal, just for this purpose.

Converting files is a breeze. Just click on the toolbar:

Or if you want more options, go through the menu, File > Export as PDF ...

OpenOffice offers a range of conversion options, including the quality of images, how to treat hyperlinks, encryption and read-only features, and more.

PrimoPDF

PrimoPDF is a neat little thing. PrimoPDF is a PDF converter - and it will create PDF documents from ANY file that is printable. Any file.

It will install as a virtual printer. Then, when you want to convert your documents into PDF, choose Primo from the list of available printers, give the output file a name - and that's it.

Choose the printer:

Choose your output file settings. This includes the quality / size of the output file and post-processing, like opening or emailing the file.

The only limitation is that the software requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher to run.

Finally, website document conversion

Let's see how you can convert websites into PDF documents, in seconds.

PDF Download

This software comes as an add-on to Internet browsers, either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. I'm going to show you what it looks like in Firefox. If you need help installing extensions, please check my Firefox add-ons tutorial.

For the add-on, please visit the Mozilla repository. You should also check the official website for more information.

Once you install the extension, it will show up in Firefox:

To use it, click on the drop-down arrow:

After a few moments, your document will be converted and available for download:

Please note that PDF Download renders the documents quite nicely, another bonus.

Conclusion

There you go, a whole load of goodies to make your PDF experience better. With these free utilities in your toolbox, you will gain on many levels. You will save precious space on your hard disk by keeping away bloatware that does the same job with 50 times more resources. You will increase your productivity, as you now have programs that will create PDF documents in just 1-2 quick mouse clicks. You will even possibly increase your security.

Best of all, you can use them all together without any problems. For instance, OpenOffice for documents that require encryption and advanced tagging, Primo to convert images or other files on your machine, PDF Download for website, Sumatra for opening potentially risky PDF documents that might contain Javascript, and Foxit for daily usage.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Windows 7 lets you remove Internet Explorer 8

For the first time in its history, Microsoft finally has a browser that may actually be worth keeping. Even though it cannot compare with Firefox or Opera in terms of security, speed, usability, or W3C compliance, it's a lightyear leap over its predecessors (IE5-7). And for the first time, Microsoft lets you not have it.

Yes, you've read it right: for the first time, you can remove Internet Explorer from your Windows installation, permanently.

One of the big legal issues Microsoft has faced in the recent decade has been the bundling of a web browser into the Windows operating system. Not so much the bundling itself, more the fact that you could not remove the browser. Internet Explorer has always been an integral part of Windows.

Truth to be told, most users do need some sort of a browser included, because they cannot possibly use wget or similar tools to download the browser of their choice from the Internet. Then, there's the issue of router or printer configuration, some of which require a browser. For most people, having one is a total must.

Microsoft has learned a lot from the bitter legal battles with European Union over the Internet Explorer monopoly. And finally, they have decided that the browser would ship with the operating system, but it could be later removed by the user.

Starting with one of the advanced betas, Windows 7 lets you remove Internet Explorer 8 from the system, forever.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7

Let's see how this can be done. I will demonstrate using Windows 7 Ultimate Edition build 7077 (RC). Depending on the version you're running, you might not see the exact same menus and options, especially since things might change before the official release.

First, you need to open the Control Panel. Click on Programs and Features.

Then, in the left pane, click on Turn Windows features on or off.

Select Internet Explorer 8 and clear its checkbox.

You'll be warned that some Windows features and applications may cease working.

Once the removal is done, you will have to reboot.

Once you reboot, you'll see Windows re-configuring itself.

After the process is complete and you reach the desktop, IE8 icon will be gone from the taskbar and you won't be able to find Internet Explorer anywhere in the menus.

That's it. The browser will now rest in peace. You can go about happily using another browser. Or not. If you change your mind, the process is fully reversible. Go about the same procedure as before, check the unselected component and wait for the reboot.

Should you do this?

Here's the big, 600,000-dollar question. Should you? First, I must tell you a secret. Removing Internet Explorer has always possible, although not by conventional means. It was - and still is - possible by using nLite or similar products, which specialize in customizing Windows installations. The program lets you take away anything you don't want, down to individual DLLs. Great.

Except that no one really knows the consequences of these actions.

Advanced users love nLite and use it to slim their installations, taking away anything they do not need, often breaking the functionality of this and that. Even though this should not happen, Windows utilities, even the basic and innocent ones like Notepad, are all tightly integrated into the system. Removing one will cripple another, even if it takes you seven months to discover this, often by mistake.

There are tons of guides online, telling you what you can or cannot safely remove from Windows, but most of them are guesswork and based on prior experience rather than factual dependency map between applications. Thus, removing Windows components is purely a gamble. It might work - or it might not.

Today, Internet Explorer 8 can be officially removed. This means that nothing should break. Microsoft probably know what they're doing. This is a very nice and commendable decision on their behalf.

But what about hundreds of programs developed by third parties that count on Internet Explorer being installed and used as the default browser?

Exactly. Internet Explorer 8 can be removed, but the question whether this move will keep your system 100% healthy cannot be answered. It's impossible to estimate what a million other programs will do when they land into an IE-less system. Will you get errors? Or will things keep working? And if they do, will they function as expected?

My warmest suggestion is: if you don't like Internet Explorer 8, do not use it. But do not uninstall it. Keep it there, for legacy and compatibility sake, especially if you're installing big, bloated programs created by big companies.

By removing Internet Explorer, you may reduce the exposure factor of your system to vulnerabilities and possible exploits somewhat, but if you take things into the right perspective, this should not be much of an issue. It's possible to live happily with Internet Explorer 6 infesting the system, even without anti-virus software or regular patches, so I see no reason why Internet Explorer 8 should be a life-or-death issue.

Wondering how to keep your Windows safe? Plain and simple: follow a few simple Web practices. There's no dark magic to it. Alternative applications, a bit of reasoning, no random clicking on random files, and you should be OK. Really.

Conclusion

Removing Internet Explorer 8 can be done, quite easily. Nevertheless, I, a Linux geek and fanboy, sincerely recommend you do not do this. You may break dependencies you might not even be aware of. You may not even notice something is wrong. But a year from now, you might try to install a program that will complain and fail, and you won't even know why this is.

Check out the installation requirements for some programs out there. Quite a few require that Internet Explorer be installed. It's like Hotel California: you can check out, but you can never leave.

My best advice is to simply forget about Internet Explorer. If you don't like it, don't use it. It's that simple. If you are really bothered by what your system demands of you, by the lack of freedom and control, then you may want to consider a different operating system.

But if you need or want to use Windows and dislike Internet Explorer, simply use Firefox, Opera or any other browser you like. That's the simplest way of solving things.