How to Use Hiren's Boot CD to Fix Many Computer Problems

Hiren’s Boot CD is an all-in-one bootable CD solution that contains a load of useful tools you can make use of in a variety of situations. I am talking about hard drive failure, virus infections, partitioning, password recovery and data recovery. HBCD (as Hiren’s Boot CD is called) is a God-send in situations like these. It has a multitude of tools divided into a number of categories like partitioning tools, backup, recovery and BIOS/CMOS tools to name a few.Each of these categories have a number of tools listed under them. To use Hiren’s Boot CD, you have to download and then burn the downloaded ISO file onto a CD. Put the CD in the drive and restart your computer. Make sure that the BIOS settings check for the optical drive before the hard disk for bootable media.

If all that is set well, you will see a screen like below 

You can now choose to boot from the hard drive, which will boot your computer as if you had not inserted the CD, you can choose Start BootCD to access all the tools included on the CD. You can also run a mini Windows XP mode or run memory diagnostics from this main menu. I will be choosing the “Start BootCD” option to show you around. As soon as you do so, you are presented with the Hiren’s Boot CD menu like so:

Here, you can choose the category of tools you want to use by either entering the numeric code listed, or by using the arrow keys and then hitting enter to select the highlighted category. You are then presented with all the tools in that particular category. Invoke any of them in a similar fashion and you will be able to use them normally just like if you had installed them on your hard drive.

I am chossing Active Password changer here as example. This tool is use to change any password configured in your computer either it is admin or standard user. The whole process for changing password was very easy.

Let’s just look at some of the included tools and the wide possibilities that you can use this CD with. It includes antivirus and antispyware tools like MalwareBytes, Spybot Search & Destroy; that you can use to scan your computer for viruses/spyware. Of course the definitions can become outdated after some time, still the tools can be indispensable if a virus attack has left you with an unbootable computer.

Next up in line are the partitioning tools. If you performed such a task before, you might know that partitioning, resizing and formatting are best done if you don’t actually have an operating system running from the hard disk. So HBCD’s partitioning tools are a perfect fit. Similarly you can use the backup tools with ease, fix MBR problems, run diagnostics and get detailed system information without requiring a functional operating system. Heck, you can even browse files and listen to songs using the multimedia tools.