It might or might no be necessary to have a Linux Live Boot CD in with your diagnostic tools, but if you repair computers for a living, you really should have a way to boot into an OS if the hard drive has failed or if you want to troubleshoot a computer with the hard drive out. We are listing some of our favorite flavors of Linux Live Boot CDs and the features some of them contain. These are highly condensed Operating Systems that fit on a single CD and shouldn’t take users long to download and burn to disk.

Linux Live Boot CDs

Devil Linux

Knoppix

Insert

KateOS

Uses for a Bootable CD

One of the best uses for these Linux Live Boot CDs is to simply troubleshoot a failing or non-booting hard drive. These disks contain partition and other tools for the various Windows file-systems. You can also use these disks for virus scanning, browsing the Internet, computer forensics and for hardware firewalls. Some of these can even load from a USB thumbdrive. But the greatest use for Live CDs are the opportunity for Windows users to try Linux. Since Linux is a free Operating System, you can try these fully-functioning versions of Linux to see if it’s for you.

For more questions about Linux Live Boot CDs, be sure to visit our message boards at PCTechBytes.

Gadwin PrintScreen 

We finally found an XP equivalent to the Snip Tool in Vista. Gadwin Printscreen is easy to install and offers some setup preferences that can help you quickly take screenshots of websites, photos and even your desktop. You no longer have to take the entire screen. In Gadwin Printscreen, you have the ability to specify the entire screen, the active Window or a rectangular box. The rectangular box gives you the ability to left-click and drag a box over whatever you want to capture. It then saves the screenshot to the folder you specify.

This program takes is a must have for graphic designers and even the casual PC user that wants to be able to crop photos without having to use a complicated program like Photoshop.

Download Gadwin Printscreen here.

Norton UAC Tool

Norton has taken the “User” out of User Account Control by offering their own handy dandy UAC Tool that promises to make the world a better place by helping users cope with all of the extra mouse clicks involved in the Vista User Account Control security feature. Is it necessary? Maybe not. Will it help Windows Vista sell more copies? Probably not. But for those who have Vista and simply cannot stand manually having a say in what programs run on their system, this Norton tool might be for you.

Download the Norton UAC Tool Here 

Give your Start menu the power it deserves.
The average user may not have any reason to access Disk Management or the Device Manager on a consistent basis. But for the people that like to tinker, adding power shortcuts to the Start Menu makes geeking-out much faster. The shortcuts we’ll be adding today are for Disk Management, the Device Manager and Computer Management. But feel free to add whichever utility you use most often, such as a shortcut to the command line utility.

For Computer Management, right-click the desktop and select New, then Shortcut. Type compmgmt.msc in the dialog box and click Next. In the next box, give it a proper name, like Computer management and click Finish.

Do the same for Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and you should end up with three new icons on the desktop. Next, simply right-click each and select “pin to Start Menu.”

The one draw back to this is you have to keep these shortcuts somewhere and not remove them or the Start menu shortcuts might not work. We pulled the examples above directly from the Windows\System32 folder. If you navigate to that folder, you can right-click any of those programs and choose to pin them to the start menu, as well. Which would mean you would not have extra shortcuts on your desktop. We only showed you how to create the shortcuts in case you did not know how and wanted to add items from other programs to the start menu.

For those of you who do not fear the black, murky depths of the command line, here’s a very useful tip for viewing your system information all in one convenient location. Just click Start, then Run and type cmd and hit OK. This will bring you to the command prompt. Next, type systeminfo.exe and hit enter.

This list will disply numerous useful items like OS version and build, System Up Time, BIOS version, IP address, memory in use, memory available, hotfixes, product ID and a lot more.

Similar Graphical programs that do the same thing are The Belarc Advisor and Sandra SiSoft. But for most people, systeminfo.exe at the command line will be enough.

For those concerned about privacy, Free History Eraser by Smart Soft is a quick little program that can delete history files each time you close your browser Window. This free application works great and not only removes your History, it clears the typed URLs and Auto Complete data, as well.

Download Free History Eraser here.

People, we’re here today to make an important announcement: Windows Defender doesn’t suck. Really. I feel the need to make that opening statement because it really did suck at one time. But as this spyware utility has matured, we have found that it really does do a pretty good job of removing infections while protecting computers from getting infected in the first place.

So what’s the big deal about Windows Defender?
For starters, it’s owned and maintained by Microsoft. This means it’s being kept up to date and since it’s a Microsoft product, it integrates perfectly with Windows.

But there’s more than that. As malware has morphed into this living, breathing creature, Defender has kept up. for instance it does a great job of protecting PCs against dangerous rogue antivirus programs like AntiVirus2008 (AKA Antivirus XP 2008) that are nearly impossible to remove with some anti-spyware tools.

Like other anti-spyware programs, it runs in the background and and monitors your computer. It also updates automatically, so you don’t need to worry about getting behind in your definitions. You can easily schedule scans so you are not inconvenienced or forget to run scans.

Where Can You Download Windows Defender?
If you have Windows Vista, you’re already running it and you probably don’t realize it. If you have Windows XP SP2, you can download Windows Defender here.

CHKDSK is a Windows command that can be used to repair errors on hard drives if the integrety of the file system is corrupt, or if there is a bad sector on the hard drive. You can launch this by navigating through several Windows or you can simply launch the command prompt and initiate the check.

Go to Start>Run and type cmd then hit OK.

At the prompt, type:

chkdsk /r

You should be prompted to allow chkdsk to run when you restart your computer. Hit Y for yes.

For more command line tips or questions, be sure to check out our forums today.

Advanced Windows Care

Our download recommendation today is Advanced Windows Care Personal Edition. This free application does what a lot of different programs do, but it is all contained in a neat package that does it all with only a couple of clicks.

Advanced Windows Care Personal Edition helps rid your system of Spyware, registry errors, clears history, and helps prevent system lockups.

If your PC is running sluggish, you may want to uninstall any active spyware and registry tools and give Advanced Windows Care Personal Edition a try.

Download Advanced Windows Care

We will announce new DVD releases from time to time when a movie is released that has a heavy slant on technology, or a heavy geek following. Coming next week is Ironman. For those who didn’t see it in theaters, it had great special effects and will look and sound fantastic in anyone’s Blu-Ray home theater setup.

IronMan - DVD release date September 30, 2008.