FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD Alternatives

Not to be confused with the newer Hiren’s BootCD PE

A highly-customizable multiboot USB stick for modern PC Repair. Supports both Legacy BIOS and UEFI. Based on Ventoy.

Hiren’s BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment) is a restored edition of Hiren’s BootCD based on Windows 10 PE x64. PE version is being developed by Hiren’s BootCD fans. it supports UEFI booting and requires minimum 2 GB RAM.

Live/Bootable CD with network support containing tools for file and system recovery, virus scans and more.

DiskGenius, previously PartitionGuru, is full-featured partition manager, which is designed to optimize disk usage for Windows users.

Knoppix is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD / DVD (Live CD) or a USB key (Live USB), one of the first of its kind for any operating system. When starting a program, it is loaded from the removable medium and decompressed into a RAM drive.

Rescatux is a GNU/Linux rescue cd (and eventually also Windows) but it is not like other rescue disks. Rescatux comes with Rescapp. Rescapp is a nice wizard that will guide you through your rescue tasks.

Windows stores its user information, including crypted versions of the passwords, in a file called 'sam', usually found in \windows\system32\config. This file is a part of the registry, in a binary format previously undocumented, and not easily accessible.

From the site: "I have been a field service technician for many years, which means that I am out on my own fixing computers on-site and don’t always have the support of a shop or colleagues to help.

Grml provides an excellent selection of software packages for installation, deployment and system rescue. You'll get sysadmin's favourite tools.