Hello everyone,

In the past year and a half or so I’ve repaired over 300 computers. In this series I’m describing the very repair tools that I use daily. If you would like, you can see the entire series by following these links: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6.

I just flat out can’t repair computers without bootable rescue disks! Some computers are so badly infected by viruses and other malicious software that you have to attack the infection from outside of the actual computer hard drive. The best thing to do is to boot from a rescue disk and scan the computer from the CD drive.

There are many good rescue CDs available, but here are the two that I most use (and free). I absolutely would be lost without them!

1) Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10

This rescue CD is just the greatest! Download the .iso file and burn to a CD. Boot from the CD, update, and scan. The scan will run (it takes a while) and will identify any malicious software that it finds. When the scan is finished you can choose whether to clean or quarantine the infections. Incredibly effective and thorough – once the infections are removed you will be able to boot up the machine normally.

2) Trinity Rescue Kit

Once you burn the Trinity Rescue Kit .iso to a CD you have a veritable gold mine on your hands! The disk has all kinds of recovery and repair modules to choose from. You can clone your hard drive, scan for viruses, reset your password, retrieve lost data, clean up junk files, and much more. I mostly use it for the antivirus scans but it’s like a swiss army knife of recovery and repair! I don’t leave home without it.

Professor Randy says: At times you have to attack a repair problem not from “within” but from “without” the machine. Rescue disks are the best! They will “save your bacon” when nothing else will. Burn a couple of these to a CD and you will have the tools to succeed as a computer repair tech.