Free livecd software for windows

This lists the Gentoo-specific options, along with a few options that are built-in to the kernel, but that have been proven very useful to users.

Also, all options that start with "do" have a "no" inverse, that does the opposite. For example, "doscsi" enables SCSI support in the initial ram-disk boot, while "noscsi" disables it.

Major Features:

1. Hardware options:
   • acpi=on - This loads support for ACPI and also causes the acpid daemon to be started by the CD on boot. This is only needed if your system requires ACPI to function properly. This is not required for Hyper-threading support.
   • acpi=off - Completely disables ACPI. This is useful on some older systems, and is also a requirement for using APM. This will disable any Hyper-threading support of your processor.
   • console=X - This sets up serial console access for the CD. The first option is the device, usually ttyS0 on x86, followed by any connection options, which are comma separated. The default options are 9600,8,n,1.
   • dmraid=X - This allows for passing options to the device-mapper RAID subsystem. Options should be encapsulated in quotes.
   • doapm - This loads APM driver support. This requires you to also use acpi=off.
   • dobladecenter - This adds some extra pauses into the boot process for the slow USB CDROM of the IBM BladeCenter.
   • dopcmcia - This loads support for PCMCIA and Cardbus hardware and also causes the pcmcia cardmgr to be started by the CD on boot. This is only required when booting from a PCMCIA/Cardbus device.
   • doscsi - This loads support for most SCSI controllers. This is also a requirement for booting most USB devices, as they use the SCSI subsystem of the kernel.
   • hda=stroke - This allows you to partition the whole hard disk even when your BIOS is unable to handle large disks. This option is only used on machines with an older BIOS. Replace hda with the device that is requiring this option.
   • ide=nodma - This forces the disabling of DMA in the kernel and is required by some IDE chipsets and also by some CDROM drives. If your system is having trouble reading from your IDE CDROM, try this option. This also disables the default hdparm settings from being executed.
   • noapic - This disables the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller that is present on newer motherboards. It has been known to cause some problems on older hardware.
   • nodetect - This disables all of the auto-detection done by the CD, including device autodetection and DHCP probing. This is useful for doing debugging of a failing CD or driver.
   • nodhcp - This disables DHCP probing on detected network cards. This is useful on networks with only static addresses.
   • nodmraid - Disables support for device-mapper RAID, such as that used for on-board IDE/SATA RAID controllers.
   • nofirewire - This disables the loading of Firewire modules. This should only be necessary if your Firewire hardware is causing a problem with booting the CD.
   • nogpm - This diables gpm console mouse support.
   • nohotplug - This disables the loading of the hotplug and coldplug init scripts at boot. This is useful for doing debugging of a failing CD or driver.
   • nokeymap - This disables the key-map selection used to select non-US keyboard layouts.
   • nolapic - This disables the local APIC on Uniprocessor kernels.
   • nosata - This disables the loading of Serial ATA modules. This is useful if your system is having problems with the SATA subsystem.
   • nosmp - This disables SMP, or Symmetric Multiprocessing, on SMP-enabled kernels. This is useful for debugging SMP-related issues with certain drivers and motherboards.
   • nosound - This disables sound support and volume setting. This is useful for systems where sound support causes problems.
   • nousb - This disables the auto-loading of USB modules. This is useful for debugging USB issues.
2. Volume/Device Management:
   • dodevfs - This enables the deprecated device filesystem on 2.6 systems. You will also need to use noudev for this to take effect. Since devfs is the only option with a 2.4 kernel, this option has no effect if booting a 2.4 kernel.
   • doevms2 - This enables support for IBMs pluggable EVMS, or Enterprise Volume Management System. This is not safe to use with lvm2.
   • dolvm2 - This enables support for Linuxs Logical Volume Management. This is not safe to use with evms2.
   • noudev - This disables udev support on 2.6 kernels. This option requires that dodevfs is used. Since udev is not an option for 2.4 kernels, this options has no effect if booting a 2.4 kernel.
   • unionfs - Enables support for Unionfs on supported CD images. This will create a writable Unionfs overlay in a tmpfs, allowing you to change any file on the CD.
   • unionfs=X - Enables support for Unionfs on supported CD images. This will create a writable Unionfs overlay on the device you specify. The device must be formatted with a filesystem recognized and writable by the kernel.
3. Other options:
   • debug - Enables debugging code. This might get messy, as it displays a lot of data to the screen.
   • docache - This caches the entire run-time portion of the CD into RAM, which allows you to umount /mnt/cdrom and mount another CDROM. This option requires that you have at least twice as much available RAM as the size of the CD.
   • doload=X - This causes the initial ram-disk to load any module listed, as well as dependencies. Replace X with the module name. Multiple modules can be specified by a comma-separated list.
   • noload=X - This causes the initial ram-disk to skip the loading of a specific module that may be causing a problem. Syntax matches that of download.
   • nox - This causes an X-enabled LiveCD to not automatically start X, but rather, to drop to the command line instead.
   • scandelay - This causes the CD to pause for 10 seconds during certain portions the boot process to allow for devices that are slow to initialize to be ready for use.
   • scandelay=X - This allows you to specify a given delay, in seconds, to be added to certain portions of the boot process to allow for devices that are slow to initialize to be ready for use. Replace X with the number of seconds to pause.

With this program you could save all data on a partition to a file (such as you could save this file on a CD for example). Then if something goes wrong, you can completely restore the partition from the backup file. You no longer have to reinstall every piece of software from scratch. All you have to do is restore the partition from the backup file and then update any software that was modified since the backup was created.

Note: beware of software which installs or modifies files on multiple partitions (e.g. Windows programs which update the registry or DLLs that may be on other partitions). If one partition is saved or restored, you must include others (otherwise, inconsistencies could prevent software from running).

Partition Saving is able to compress data (using the gzip compression algorithm) and split it up into several files (e.g. if you need to save a 2 Gb partition onto a CD, this can be done by compressing it and, if necessary, splitting it up into 650 Mb files). Most partition types are supported. In the case of FAT (12, 16 and 32), ext2/3 and NTFS partitions, you can choose between saving all sectors or in-use sectors only.

Major Features:

1. Save an element (hard disk, partition, floppy disk, device)
2. Restore an element that was saved before
3. Copy an element
4. Copy a backup file created by this program, modifying its size or compression rate
5. Verify created files
6. Update partition definition in Windows 2000/XP/Vista registry
7. Update BOOTSECT.DOS/BOOTSECT.BAK file
8. Explore a partition
9. Simulate elements with created files
10. Create files on a NTFS drive under Windows for use in saving
11. Cancel bad sectors information of a filesystem

Enhancements:

Released on January 18th. Major change is that it is first Linux version (DOS and Windows versions still existing). There is some constraints on this version, notably Linux version cannot save an active partition (for this you need a LiveCD). I cannot test this version on all Linux distributions and versions, mostly for 64 bits versions.

All versions are into the same file that does not need any installation (just uncompress it into a directory).

Others evolutions are:

• availability to save partitions table and all sectors of an hard disk in Windows version (you need at least Windows XP).
• availability to load options file from interface with viewing it before. A comment can also be added to options file when it is created.
• take into account of file extended access rights on ext2/ext3 partitions to allow their opening into explorer (this did not disallow their saving/restoring).
• availability to force disk size detection with depending on partitions table content. This will only concern DOS version with using the "-tds" option (note: for less than 8 Go disk, this can lead to a difference of detection with previous versions).
• remove of some checks that could disallow detection of some USB disks (note: this can lead to changes in disk numbering if USB disk is found before other ones).
• some changes into user interface.
  

Requirements:
Hardware:

• 386 or better
• 4 Mb of memory (could work with less, but data compression might not work). Free DOS memory must be at least 300 Kb
  

Software:

• DOS (version >= 3.3)

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