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There may be a number of reasons why you might not be able to boot into your normal operating system

• No operating system installed
• Corrupt file system or boot loader
• Virus infection
• driver or system configuration problem
• Accidental deletion of important files
• Image an operating system either onto or off of the internal drive.

The only tools Microsoft gives end-users is the recovery console, which is extremely limited in capability, and DOS boot disks, which do not have built in support for NTFS, or long file names, and is also limited in what it can do to “fix” a Windows XP system. Other options include a Live Linux Distro such as Knoppix, however they still don't give you access to Windows applications.

The Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows is a stripped down version of WindowsXP that will boot off of a CD-R or USB drive, and is hardware independent. The core technology is Bart PE, similar to Microsoft's Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment). Unlike BartPE, UBCD4Win includes a number of hardware drivers, and system utilities already included, with little configuration necessary. Due to Microsoft's licensing restrictions, complete bootable ISOs can't be distributed, but instead the builder is distributed, and it will build the CD using Windows system files you provide.

You must be licensed to use the Windows source files used to build UBCD4Win and any machine you boot with UBCD4Win must be licensed to use Windows XP From the BartPE FAQ

In order to make a BartPE installation, your must have a properly licensed 
copy of the operating system. BartPE does not grant users who do not have a proper
Windows XP/2003 license the right to use a BartPE installation.

Also, according to the Microsoft EULA for Windows XP/2003, a user may not 
simultaneously use more installations of these operating systems than the 
user has license(s) for. This also goes for BartPE. In practice this means 
that the user may not use, for instance, a single license installation on 
one computer while simultaneously using a BartPE installation (created using
that license) on another computer.

This guide will show you how to build a bootable CD and USB drive you can use on your Eee.

• A Windows XP or Vista computer to build the image on
• The latest builder download from http://ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm (it is about 256MB)
• A Windows XP CD that you hold the license for(NOT a restore CD, but a genuine OEM/retail XP Home/Pro CD)
• A couple gigs of hard drive space
• 1GB or larger USB flash drive

Technically the program is capable of also using Server 2003 media and can also try to pull files off of an in use installation, but using a Windows CD is ideal. Preferably you should use SP3 level media, though SP2 might work as well. If your media doesn't have SP3 included, you can Slip stream it using the builder.

• Install the UBCD4Win builder. I installed it to the default location C:\UBCD4Win
• Copy the contents of your WindowsXP CD onto your hard drive. This isn't strictly necessary, but it is quicker than accessing a CD drive. If you have an ISO of Windows, you can mount it using Daemon tools, etc.
• Start UBCD4Win

• Inside UBCD4Win there's a couple options you will have to set. First it will ask if you want the program to “search” for source files. Decline and use the icon on the right to browse to where you have your copy of the Windows CD.

• Go to source→ check, it should identify what version of Windows the installation files are for.

• Under media output selected Create ISO image. Even though I'm planning on eventually creating a bootable USB, this will give me an ISO that I can test in a virtual machine, or burn off and use in computers with optical drives.

The plugins button at the bottom will allow us to control the configuration of additional software. We needn't concern ourselves with this right now

• Click build.

• You will have to re-agree to the EULA for your Windows product.

• The program is now building the necessary files, and creating the ISO image. It took about 5 minutes to complete on my computer. Part way through you'll see a console window pop up then close. Don't touch it. Once complete, click close in the main builder window, and exit out of UBCD4Win Builder.

In Windows Explorer, navigate to the UBCD4Win program folder. There's a couple files of interest here.

1. BartPE folder contains all the files that were compiled together to build the ISO.
2. UBCD4Win.ISO is a bootable ISO that's ready to be burned onto a CD-RW, or mounted inside a virtual machine.
3. UBUSB.EXE is the program used to create a bootable USB device.

We cannot make a bootable USB drive until after we've built the project in the steps above. Warning: this process will delete all contents of your USB drive. To create a bootable USB drive, follow the following steps:

• Remove all USB drives except the one you wish to install UBCD4Win onto (this will prevent accidental deletion).
• Open UBUSB.EXE from the program folder (eg: c:\UBCD4Win\UBUSB.EXE)
• Confirm the selected drive letter matches up with the drive you wish to use
• Uncheck “Create CD image for USB boot with no BIOS support”, this isn't necessary
• Set the file system for FAT32LBA if you have a flash drive bigger than 2GB, and FAT16-LBA for flash drives 2GB or smaller.
• Press go.

The program is now formatting and transferring files onto the USB drive. This may take a while, particularly on slow / cheap USB drives. It took me half an hour on a really cheap drive.

If the BIOS is not set to OS install: Finished, it will take a long time to boot (over half an hour). During the initial boot screen, press ESC to bring up the boot menu. Select your USB drive, and enter. Shortly you should get a boot menu. There are a number of tools on the drive. For now select: Launch “The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows”, and hit enter.

A “now loading” process bar will move across the bottom of the screen. I've found this goes quite slowly. Once the progress bar has filled up, the machine may appear to hang. Be patient, it may take up to seven several minutes to continue.

Eventually you will get a standard “Windows XP” startup splash screen, and it will load into a GUI. On the 4G it may take a couple minutes to progress past the Pre-shell screen.

You should will now be booted into your UBCD4Win. At this point you will be asked if you want network support. This is for Ethernet support only, select yes if you do.

Without extra drivers added, the 4G will only be available at 640×480 resolution.

As a comparison, booting off of a CD, I've found other computers take around five minutes total, and provide at least 800×600

The UBCD4Win includes a variety of useful tools built in, and gives you access to built in windows tools

• Access internal drives, and attached USB drives through My computer
• With network access enabled, access network shares
• Included Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers
• TestDisk Can be used to recover partitions that appear lost
• MBRFix Will allow you to repair a corrupt Master Boot Record
• Included tools like Driveimage XML, and SelfImage can be used to image / restore drives
• Windows tools like Disk Management “diskmgmt.msc” can be accessed to partition the drive
• Regedit can be used on your offline system
• AntiVir Antivirus can be used to scan for viruses
• VNC allows you to connect to remote machines, or even make the UBCD4Win machine a VNC server.

In addition, most “portable” applications can be launched, allowing you to do additional tasks like instant messaging, or word processing.

There may be an additional program that you want to use in the UBCD4Win environment that isn't built in, or isn't available as a portable application. You can add plug-ins to add the functionality. In the case of some software, due to licensing restrictions, the plugin that you download will require you to copy files from the program folder.

If you do not have service pack 3 already slipstreamed into your installation media, you can use UBCD4Win Builder. I highly recommend using nLite to create a slipstreamed XP-SP3 install disc, so future OS installations are done directly to SP3. You can slipstream SP3 into any previous service pack level, without having to do the intermediate steps. For example you can go SP0→SP3, SP1→SP3, SP2→SP3

To slipstream service pack 3 you need:

1. Genuine XP installation media
2. Downloaded Service Pack 3 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&DisplayLang=en
3. A couple gigs of hard drive space

The steps to slipstream SP3 are as follows:

1. Open UBCD4Win builder
2. Go to source→slipstream
3. In source point to your Windows XP CD or where you copied files to the your hard drive
4. In service pack, point to the WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe file you downloaded above
5. Check “Source is read only”
6. Click “OK”

It will now start integrating service pack 3. Once it has completed, it will put the output files in C:\UBCD4Win\win-slipstreamed Use this as your source when building a boot disk.