If Windows is suffering from serious problems, sometimes the only option to fix a computer is to boot into another operating system. For just such occasions, one tool that you should keep to hand is a CD to which you've burned a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD software, otherwise known as UBCD.

UBCD is, as the name suggests, a bootable disc. You can download it as an .ISO image file and once you've downloaded the file, you'll probably want to burn it to a bootable CD or DVD disk. When you need it, just pop it into the troublesome computer and boot from the CD or DVD drive instead of the hard disk.

You may then find, for example, that you can access and rescue files via the inbuilt Linux OS that were not accessible from the broken Windows installation. You can thus copy off the files before attempting any further or riskier repairs. This is a really useful product to have in your PC tool kit.  Read More