Frequently Asked Questions

Ultimate Boot CD runs independently of any operating system. It will boot from any Intel-compatible machine, regardless of whether DOS/Windows/Linux/BeOS is installed on the machine. However, you do need an operating system and a ISO-capable CD writer software to create the Ultimate Boot CD from the downloaded ISO image file.

An ISO image file is a platform-independent way to describe the contents of a CD. There are tools on every operating system to recreate a CD from a given ISO image file. Hence it is a good way to distribute CDs over the Internet without having to snail mail the physical disc.

Here is some software you can use to burn ISO image files under Windows:

• Using Nero Express 5
• Using Nero Nero SmartStart and Nero Express 6
• Using Nero 7 Ultra Edition
• Using Easy Media Creator
• Using various freeware for burning an ISO image to CD or DVD

BurnCDCC and Active@ ISO Burner are small dedicated Windows apps for burning an ISO image to a CD/DVD disc in one step. Use one of them if you do not have a CD burning app, or you are unsure of how to use one for burning an ISO image.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are similar tools available on other platforms to burn an ISO image file.

Chances are, your BIOS is configured to boot from the harddisk first instead of the CDROM drive. Since your HDD is bootable, it will boot into your usual OS. Change your BIOS settings to boot from the CDROM drive first before the harddisk.

[Contributed by Claus Kofoed Nielsen] Once battling with a Toshiba laptop, I was browsing the Toshiba tech-support website, where i found a note about problems with DVD/CD-R combi drives. On these drives there has been reported problems with reading CD's burned at high speed. Toshiba suggested not to burn CD's at higher speed than 8x to make sure they will read on their combi drives. I have followed the advice when burning CD's for general use, that I'll try to make sure will read on most systems, and have to say it's worth the prolonged time to burn the CD. For some of the problems with not reading the CD I suspect this could be a solution - particular in cases where commercial CD's will boot (where the production is different from home burned CD's). Personally, I burn the UBCD at 4x - even when using 52x capable CD-R disks, and have since then not had the problem.

For CD-drives that won't boot any bootable CD, though the BIOS enables it, is worth checking if they are installed as slave instead of master on the IDE.

[Contributed by Charles Appel] Check your BIOS settings for the following:

• CDROM is set to bootable
• CDROM is set to boot before your first disk

If both these are set, then perhaps you have a bad burn of UBCD. Try the following:

• Burn at a slower speed
• Burn to a CDR instead of a CDRW
• Make sure you are burning the ISO correctly.

[Contributed by IceCube] In newer BIOSes you can press F8 (or an equivalent key) at boot time to select from which hard drive/cdrom drive you want to boot without altering the boot sequence in the BIOS menu itself (a sort of 'boot once' option).

Geez, I wish I know. But here are a couple of random things that you might want to check out. Firstly, are you using a CDRW disc? I have personally encountered some machines that refuse to boot up from certain CDRW discs (eg. 2x works, but 10x doesn't). Secondly, are you sure the disc is in the right drive? One user had two drives, one DVDROM and one CDROM drive. He didn't know the DVDROM drive was set to the master drive, so he was desperately trying to boot from the CDROM drive. When he discovered the problem, he simply move the disc from the CDROM drive to the DVDROM drive, and it worked without problems.

[Contributed by Jimmy Obomsawin] Another possibility that I have run into in many computers (particularly homebrew systems) is that the system searches for a boot device before the CD is read if the BIOS is faster than the CD-ROM. Since it doesn't appear to have a CD (yet), the BIOS will go to the hard drive. To get around this, many BIOSes have an option like "Power on Delay" or "Boot Delay" that lets you delay the system bootup a few seconds, giving the CD-ROM drive time to catch up.

[Contributed by Alain Vanden-Eede] I have another tip to boot properly when you can't change this delay: you switch the power on and you press the Pause key of the keyboard before or during the detection of IDE devices (in fact before the boot process), you wait a few seconds and then you press the Space bar so the detection of the boot CD is OK. I found this tip when my old computer was to slow to detect and boot on a CD.

You don't "move around" the CD because these are separate floppy boot disk images, not one single program. To activate another boot disk image, you'll need to reboot your machine.

Nope. I was afraid if I did that Micro$oft might send their secret police after me! But you can use Ranish Partition Manager, which is a very nice and capable substitute for FDISK. Or you could boot the FreeDOS image, which includes the FreeDOS version of FDISK.

You could be using a USB keyboard/mouse which is not natively supported by your BIOS.

[Contributed by Kofoed Nielsen] A first hint would be to look if there's a feature in the BIOS of enabling USB Legacy support and the same for PS/2 mouse/keyboard.

[Contributed by IceCube] An update of isolinux/syslinux can help when you have an USB keyboard that doesn't work.

[Contributed by Stephen Haffly] I found that with a Compaq Presario 2140US, I had to go to the BIOS and disable "Legacy USB support".

Yes, just create your own customized CD (Hint: You are not restricted to adding .img files only!)

[Contributed by Jim Goodman] Download Smart Boot Manager from http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/ and install it on a floppy disk. Set your BIOS to boot from floppy. After the floppy boots you will be able to boot from any drive that is connected to the computer, including the CD.

[Partially contributed by Gert Hulselmans] Yes, please refer to the customization page to find out how to transfer UBCD to a USB memory stick. Your BIOS needs to support booting USB devices. If it does not, you can try PLoP Bootmanager, which boots from a floppy disk or bootable CDROM and enables booting from USB (no UHCI, no OHCI and no EHCI support) on non-supporting BIOSes.

[Contributed by Darrell Wiebesick] I have experience similar problems (not with the UBCD) with other systems that would boot certain CDs and not others. It has always been the CDROM drive. I suspect that the laser cannot properly focus on the CD. I would temporarily replace the CDROM drive to confirm that it is not some other hardware issue.

[Contributed by IceCube] Some PCs have a very buggy BIOS, which won't work correctly with isolinux. Some BIOSes have buggy USB support such that booting UBCD with syslinux from an USB thumb drive won't work, while booting UBCD from CDROM drive with isolinux works. Isolinux and syslinux have a lot of workarounds for buggy BIOSes (look at the source code under "/core/isolinux.asm"), so most PCs are able to boot isolinux-based CDROMs now.

For certain machines, you need to enable the floppy drive in the BIOS for memdisk to work properly. For these machines, if you set the floppy drive in the BIOS to "None", you will get the above error message.

You can try this site.

[Contributed by Gandalf] The newer version of WinImage (6.30.6130) has a new feature in Change format -> Select custom image size. Once you do this, you can change a LOT of params. I dont know what most of them mean, but changing the total number of sectors does the trick. I simply added another zero to the end and I got ~11megs.

[Contributed by Stefan Gmeiner] Here's how you can create a 2.88MB floppy image with Linux.

1. Create a empty 2.88 MByte file:

   $ dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.img bs=1024 count=2880

2. Format the created image file and copy the bootsector from a real floppy disk:

   $ mformat -i disk.img -f 2880 -B /dev/fd0 ::

3. Copy file to the image:

   $ mcopy -i disk.img a:*.* ::

[Contributed by Adrian Stanciu] Both IMA or IMG files are the same thing inside.

[Contributed by Adrian Stanciu] Yes, use Winimage: "Disk... Read disk...", then "Image... Format disk..." and "Disk... Change format..." to 2.88MB, then add more files and save your disk image. Also, please note that you need a bootable image. Simply making an empty image and inserting files won't do it.

[Contributed by Claus Kofoed Nielsen] To create disk images from scratch I'll like to suggest to look at Total Commander. Total Commander (former Windows Commander) is "the ultimate file manager" for Windows similar to the Windows Explorer. But Total Commander uses a different approach: it has two fixed windows side by side like some well-known file managers for DOS or Linux. (DOS Navigator; Midnight Commander; Norton Commander etc.) For file handling and managing Total Commander is virtually a real Swiss Army knife (Made in Switzerland ;-) - particularly if the different plugins are taken in use.

For working with UBCD, I use the ISO-plugin to browse ISO-images and "unpack" them; and the AZEimg-plugin to work with disk images. (The ISO-plugin can also be used for image-files - but only to browse and unpack) The plugin, called IMaGinator v1.6 Copyright (c) 2003 Andreas Ziemer (AZEimg-plugin) have the following key functions (copied from the readme file):

• Handle long filenames
• Create disk images (1.2MB 1.44MB 2.88MB)
• Create harddisk images (2..32MB) with or without master boot record
• Copy files from and to IMG
• Create/delete files/directories within IMG
• Make image bootable (bootable, when copied back to a physical disk)
• Requires a bootblock datafile. You can rip the bootblock of a formatted disk in your floppy drive with a supplied utility. To get the bootblock from the disk in A: to a file named BOOTBLK.BIN type GETBOOT A: BOOTBLK.BIN
• Create a master boot record (MBR) with a single partition containing the files you copy into the image. This option is only available with HDimages. A MBR file is included (FREEDOS under GNU GPL, www.freedos.org)

I've tried a 32MB boot image filled with all kind of DOS utilities (Wonder if I ever really will need an image that huge or bigger ? -- If so, I can use WinImage to make an Image of a Zip100 or ZIP250.) To boot that big an image I used the bcdw option of CDShell - memdisk might also work; I haven't tried yet - but diskemu is limited to floppy disk images <= 2.88 MB. The plugin works with both .img and .ima files; and is compatible with WinImage. (Though I'm not sure with images larger than 32 MB - here I have had problems with the plugin.)

Total Commander can be downloaded from http://www.ghisler.com/ - it is shareware so can be tested for free - IMHO is fully worth the 40 Swiss Francs it cost to register. The plugins can be found at the same site. For the AZEimg plugin be sure to get the latest version - I use v1.6, after having problems with version 1.5.

Another thing: With Total Commander - and the plugins - you have a replacement for theVFD - and Total Commander works on ALL Windows versions - there's even a 16 bit version for Win 3.1!

As far I as I know, you can't do it. However, if you are trying to add some version of Windows, I suggest you take a look at this site.

[Contributed by Charles Appel] As I'm sure you know, UBCD is a collection of freeware, shareware and open license utilities. There are no warez or paid software(s) on the CD. However, licenses will vary from program to program. UBCD has a "docs" directory which should contain the original documentation and for the most part, include license information.

What I would recommend is that you download the ISO, extract it with a program like WinISO or WinImage and review the contents of the docs directory. An example is the aida32 image. It mentions free for personal use but restrictions for commercial use. You will have to interpret the license to see how it effects your organization.

In some cases you may have to visit the website of the program supplied to investigate licensing. Should you feel that any license does not meet with your organization's policy, you can simply delete the image or program. You'll then need to repackage the ISO before burning to CD.

Despite our good-faith efforts, should you find that a license has not been included in the CD, we'd appreciate you notifying us so that we can correct or at least point to where licensing can be found.

[Contributed by IceCube] You can include the following in the relevant config files (must be a config file that is loaded by menu.c32 or vesamenu.c32).

MENU PASSWD passwd (Only valid after a LABEL statement.) Sets a password on this menu entry. "passwd" can be either a cleartext password, a SHA-1 encrypted password (starting with $4$), or and MD5 encrypted password (starting with $1$). Use the included Perl scripts "sha1pass" or "md5pass" to encrypt passwords. MD5 passwords are compatible with most Unix password file utilities; SHA-1 passwords are probably unique to SYSLINUX. Obviously, if you don't encrypt your passwords they will not be very secure at all. If you are using passwords, you want to make sure you also use the settings "NOESCAPE 1", "PROMPT 0", and either set "ALLOWOPTIONS 0" or use a master password (see below.) If passwd is an empty string, this menu entry can only be unlocked with the master password. MENU MASTER PASSWD passwd Sets a master password. This password can be used to boot any menu entry, and is required for the [Tab] and [Esc] keys to work.

Thanks for letting me know. Many kind folks have informed me about this, and the price ranges from $5 to $50! Sometimes, it is even combined with the Windows Ultimate Boot CD. My only comment is: they definitely do a much better job in hyping up the UBCD that I ever could!

In case you didn't notice, I actually added the UBCD website URL to the menus since one of the 2.x releases to alert people to the fact that they can get the CD for free or for a small fee from one of the volunteers. That way, I hope I am doing my bit to increase people's awareness about this issue.

I am not sure what else I can do about this. I don't own the copyright to any of the software (except maybe for the menus, and Adrian owns the rights to Disk Image Writer). In addition, if people would just search for "Ultimate Boot CD" before buying anything, it would be quite obvious that UBCD is free for the download.

If you have any advice on how we can prevent more people from being had, please email me and let me know. Remember, I can't afford a lawyer. Hell, I am not even based in the US! Otherwise, it's caveat emptor!

[Contributed by Charles Appel] I can confirm NAV5 reports the file is infected with "HackerTool", both on the CD as well as the link you provided. I have not been able to find out much info on it. Symantec's website is weak and I don't have a good source for real virus information, so I can't verify.

I would guess there is no problem with the file and that is just a coincidence the compiled code in WipeCMOS matches a NAV pattern. Frankly I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. On the other hand, since WipeCMOS performs some of the same actions some viruses do, it's also not a surprise the OP codes match. FProt doesn't complain.

I ran WipeCMOS through antigen which contains 5 engines (Sophos, CA Vet, CA Etrust, and a couple others), and it came up clean. I'm confident enough to keep in on my UBCD.

All DOS programs which can be run under FreeDOS are located in the DOSAPPS subdirectory on the UBCD. When you launch any of the DOS programs using the FreeDOS boot disk, the drive letter which the UBCD is mounted is given in the environment variable %BCDW_CDROM%. You can easily switch to the DOSAPPS subdirectory on the UBCD and run any applicable DOS programs from the command line.

We were informed that both Bart's CDROM and Network Boot Disks make use of Win98, so we had no choice but to remove them in case M$ decided to send their legion of lawyers after us In UBCD V3.1, we will be introducing MSRRC (contributed by Erwin Veermans), which is basically an improved Bart's Network Boot Disk based on FreeDOS.

Check out the MEMDISK documentation page. There is a new raw option in MEMDISK V2.13 and later that works around this problem.

Please see this FAQ contributed by Erwin Veermans.

[Source] You may need to configure your BIOS so that the SATA HDD is detected on either the primary or secondary IDE channel. This can be done by switching the SATA drive from "enhanced mode" to "compatibility mode" in BIOS (compatibility mode is sometimes called "native mode" or "IDE mode"). Unfortunately, not all BIOSes support this feature.

Download the latest version of syslinux. Extract and read docs\menu.txt.