Being the computer guy among family and friends I often get asked to fix their PCs.  Over the years I have built up a wide range of tools that I use when fixing the computers.  The issues have involved cleaning spyware/viruses, fixing network issues, setting up email, rescuing personal data etc.

Here is my current PC repair toolkit:

Microsoft Windows XP CD - required for refreshing Windows files for repair or worst case scenario a full rebuild.

Microsoft Windows XP SP1 and SP2 - I am surprised at the number of people who do not have these already installed.

Hiren’s Boot CD - this is the Swiss army knife of Boot CDs - it includes virus scanners, many disk tools, anti spyware, file managers literally everything you could possibly need.

Ultimate Boot CD - another boot cd, not quite as comprehensive as Hiren’s boot cd but still comes in handy every now and then.

Knoppix and Ubuntu Linux Live CDs - these Linux live CDs are a must if the PC is so bad that you can’t even boot into Windows to safeguard any data. Also I have found the Linux distros more tolerant of faulty hard disks and I could rescue data when Windows didn’t even recognize the faulty disk.

Spybot Search and Destroy - removes spyware from a Windows PC - the best I have ever used.

Avast Antivirus (Free Home Edition) - an excellent free edition of Avast for personal use.  I install this on any new PCs.

AVG Antivirus (Free Edition) - free anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-rootkit software.

Driver Collector - useful for creating a copy of all your hardware in Windows. Note that you need to make the copy before you run into any trouble so that you have them in one place when you need to rebuild a PC.

ZoneAlarm Firewall - my Windows Firewall of choice.

InstallPad - an excellent utility which allows you to add software to a new PC very easily.  You just tick the box for each software app that you want to install and it handles everything for you.  Well worth a try if you haven’t used it.

SystemInfo - a very handy tool to read any system info from your PC.

AutoRuns  - from Sysinternals (now part of Microsoft) allows you to control any startup programs, services etc. on you machine.  Brilliant for preventing nasty spyware from loading up giving you a chance to remove it.

Process Explorer - gives you way more info than the standard task manager in Windows - an absolute must.

CrossLoop - I try more and more now (where possible) to fix PC problems remotely using CrossLoop (allows simple secure remote control of a Windows PC).  This is one of the most user friendly remote access apps I have used and a less experienced user on the other end will have no difficulties in setting up their end of the connection. This is handy for most tasks but for the major jobs which require reboots, when not running in Windows and internet connection issues this obviously won’t help you.

Well, that’s my list - do you use any other tools that I haven’t mentioned here ?

Microsoft have made Windows Vista Enterprise available as a Virtual PC image for a 30 day evaluation.  This is great for those of us that would like to try it out but don’t want to upgrade our systems yet.  Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is available as a free download so you have everything you need to get going.

I downloaded it onto my Windows XP Pro machine and I had it up and running with no issues.  One thing to watch is the virtual network card is not connected and you will need to modify this in Virtual PC before starting the image.

Download details: Windows Vista Enterprise 30 day Evaluation

About a month ago I decided to give Ubuntu ( a very popular distribution of Linux) a go and try it out to see what all the fuss is about. Since I am a big fan of virtualization I decided that I would use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to minimize the risk. I could then install it without any chance of messing up my main Windows machine. After a bit of work, I managed to create an Ubuntu Virtual PC and almost everything worked ok.

The main issue I had was that it wouldn’t recognise my sound card on my home pc which was pretty annoying since I couldn’t listen to music or watch a dvd etc. I was convinced that the issue was with Ubuntu so I spent a while reinstalling ALSA drivers and all of sorts of Linux commands but to no avail.

I also download a VMWare Ubuntu Image in order to test that but my sound card still was not detected. While I enjoyed working with Ubuntu I wasn’t completely happy with no sound so I investigated further. I ran the Ubuntu Live CD on my home pc and I was surprised to see that my sound card was actually recognised then. So, it turned out to be the virtualization technology that could not recognize my sound card and not Ubuntu. So this left me with only one solution, install Ubuntu on my PC and dual boot with Windows XP.

I didn’t want to take the chance with the full Ubuntu install while trying to protect my Windows XP setup. The thought of partitioning my drive and messing with boot loaders didn’t really inspire me with confidence. I had come across Wubi a while back on Lifehacker and I decided to give it a try. Wubi allows you to install Ubuntu from within Windows using a familiar Windows installer interface and if you ever want to remove Ubuntu you can just run the uninstaller from within Windows. Pretty neat.

Below I describe step by step how to install Ubuntu using Wubi:

1. Make a backup of any important files on your PC. (Just in case)

2. I recommend downloading the Ubuntu (Alternate) ISO file seperately, the Wubi installer will do this for you but that is just my preference. If you do download the ISO seperately, then just place it in the same folder as the Wubi installer and it will be detected automatically.
Note: Wubi uses the Alternate ISO, available at ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/feisty/

3. Run the Wubi Installer, and you will see the following screen. (Don’t click Next yet)

4. Before you do anything, click on the Settings button and modify the settings based on your preferences. Since Wubi installs your Ubuntu system to a virtual disk file you can could which drive to install it on. Don’t worry it doesn’t do any partitioning or anything.

System Size: This will be size of your system disk where all Ubuntu applications will be installed to, if you plan of installing plenty of software then you will need to allow plenty of space for this drive.
Home Size: This is the size of your local folder where you personal preferences are stored.
Swap Size: This is the size that you wish to allocate to your swap file ( if you don’t know what this is then leave it at the default).
Installtion Drive: This is the drive where you want to intall the Ubuntu virtual disk drives to, it shows the space that you will have remaining on that drive based on your settings.
Keyboard: Your keyboard preference
Desktop Environment: Choose Ubuntu

Once you are happy with your settings, click the Next button.

5. Enter your preferred language, username and password and click Next

The installer will proceed to install the necessary support files prior to the Ubuntu installation.

6. When prompted to reboot, then choose Reboot Now and click Finish.

7. Once you PC reboots, the actual Ubuntu installation will begin.

8. Proceed with the installation selecting defaults where you are unsure of the selection.

9. When you boot up your computer from now onwards you will be given the option to choose either Windows XP or Ubuntu.

The installation went very smooth for me and now I am happily using Ubuntu for web browsing, watching DVDs, listening to music, blogging, etc.
There is the odd time that I have to boot into Windows to use some application for which I don’t have an equivalent in Ubuntu.

I plan to do a few more posts in the near future about Ubuntu v’s Windows XP (application by application) and also some posts about writing .NET code from within Ubuntu using the Mono Project.