FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD updated their cover photo.
Sorry, not much of an update here 
😅 just, that misaligned, old, ugly timeline photo was like stabbing me in the eye. Had to take a few minutes to rearrange it for the new FB layout. Not much to see here, carry on...
(months later, I will come back to this and think this comment is silly too. wuah. wellp... what can ya do?)
So, I've been wondering. Do you feel like the state of the PC industry has left no room for PC repair techs anymore? As everyone just replaces their stuff when it acts up, and as modern OSes offer an easy "restore" button and hardware is dirt-cheap? Sure, "restore" has been around for a long time, but now it's built-in to Windows 8 and 10, and Macs, well... the hardware usually dies before the software. 
What do you think of the state of PC repair?
On the scale of effectiveness that exists between "shitty application of the best grease with big-ass air gaps" and "uniformly applied vegetable oil as thermal grease", the difference between thermal paste of any kind is like the tiniest notch on a ruler. None of them matter. Just get whatever crap comes your way. Just APPLY IT RIGHT. Every paste is better than air. That means do NOT smooth it out with a credit card or whatever... make an appropriate blob (I do a modified X format with a dob in middle) and squish it down.
Oh, they keep changing things... here's one more helpful guide to getting Windows 7 updates back to life. 
Grab all the updates from the first table on the site they mention, though. That's what fixed it for me this time around.
Apparently Microsoft still loves us. Get a clean Windows 7 installation up-to-date super quickly with this update rollup! See the previous post regarding how to speed up Windows 7 updates, but instead of using WSUS Offline Update, try applying this update instead. The trouble is, you have to acquire this update package (to use on a new PC) through Internet Explorer to use the Update Catalog.
New Windows 7 install/reinstall? Updates take hours to process the first time? That's because there are too many possibilities being filtered through for Windows Update the first time around. You can help narrow it down to only a few minutes for the scan with these tips:
1 - During the first-boot wizard (your name, product key, etc.), connect to the internet but choose the "Ask me later" option for Windows Update. This will keep it from building the WU database on startup (wh...ich begins the multi-hour process).
2 - Use a copy of WSUS Offline Update - when you're building it (from another PC, run UpdateGenerator.exe), target it for Windows 7 versions, and allow it to "Include service packs" (even if you're using SP1-integrated Windows installers, which you should). When running it (client\UpdateInstaller.exe), run it until it says there are no more updates it can install (about 3 reboots).
3 - Finally, once it's "up to date" (in my experience this is far from the truth, about 150 updates from current), allow Windows Update to scan - I do suggest re-enabling automatic updates.
4 - If there are over 50 updates to perform, break it into batches - deselect a large number of them (*shrug*; at random) until you're only installing 50 at a time. Each update takes exponentially longer to install as they stack up in one single reboot cycle, so breaking them up over multiple reboots makes the process go much quicker.
4b - While installing updates, if you picked too many, USE THE CANCEL BUTTON. Don't use Start->Reboot, or you'll get stuck being forced to allow all 150 updates to install, very slowly... and when you cancel, the updates that were installed up to that point will still go through, so you can just cancel, THEN reboot, then install more updates.
5 - Run Windows' Disk Cleanup as Administrator, once the system is all up to date, to run the Windows Update Cleanup option. This is an awesome useful update that's part of post-SP1 Windows updates, and helps clean up the component store and improve performance.
Enjoy. Finally, something worthy of a new post.
The day is finally here! I'm selling my daily-driver PC, and a handful of other things (in other listings, being posted soon). You can own a little piece of PC-repair history, the one that the latest version (v4.6) of F4UBCD was developed on - and the one I used every day for the past 4-odd years. I couldn't even fit all the upgrades in the title. Includes the IBM/Lenovo Advanced Dock, which has a built-in AC adapter, and even has a slot for a PCI-E graphics card (that the BIOS will use)!
All right, round 2! Let's see if I can keep up with a post a day for a while. So, curious... how far around the world has F4UBCD made it? Any techs in the SF Bay Area here? I've always wanted to see someone *other* than me using the thing!
I keep like, going away, coming back... then disappearing, coming back... and keep like, "not" working on the next version... I'm a bad steward of social media. But lately, I've been seeing a lot more buzz about the boot CD. Hmm... maybe stoke the fire while I gear up to sell off my prized ThinkPad T500 which v4.6 was created on? (as I have a "shiny 'new'" T530 on its way now... but still using the T500 as my daily driver with an Asus Transformer T100 as a side-kick writing this on now!)
All right, I'll answer your questions here. I'll promise to answer, in great detail, a minimum of ONE of your questions here. Probably more, as I get bored and tend to blah-blah on and on in great detail about a question posted here. Go ahead, give it a try!
FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD shared Matt Falcon's post.
Among a few other things, one of the top things I wish I could do with a time machine is go back to the early/mid '90s and stop the "battery memory" myth before it even got started. Please, if you work with battery devices or if you're one to advise people on how to treat their batteries properly, PLEASE do what you can to stop the "battery memory" myth! See the attached status post from my personal page.
God, the battery-memory myth needs to die! No battery, no battery at all, no battery powered device, no rechargeable device, nothing with a battery anywhere in ...its design, suffers from anything related to the word "memory"! Yet, 20 years later, people still think they need to drain devices, and that leaving them dead is a good thing. This is why shit keeps going dead, and batteries are considered unreliable.
See MoreNeed a direct link to download F4UBCD v4.61 instead of using the torrent? Through one very awesome donor, now I've got a stable mirror space for files. Check out the updated link at the bottom of the post!
Using it every day, I kinda feel like it's an essential tool that nobody can be without. It won't become part of the Boot CD unless it becomes compatible with offline system scans, but this is one tool you've GOT to keep in your toolkit for online, booted use. Hopefully it doesn't become obsolete any time soon, because it's an extremely powerful godsend against all the utter crap software out there. MyPC Backup, Optimizer Pro, AVG toolbars, pretty much anything with the word "toolbar", "optimizer", "support" in its name... all those scam programs and computer-screwer-uppers. This thing takes them all out in one swift whack, and it's TOTALLY worth a look - and a donation! I paid my few bucks to 'em... if you think it's as awesome as I do, you might as well!
Direct download link: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
By the way: little known tech gem. Check EVERY COMPUTER YOU RUN ACROSS for this statistic in HD Tune. It's on the "Health" tab, labeled "Current Pending Sectors". It's the single most useful, accurate, and reliable way of scanning a hard drive without having to waste a single second scanning every sector. If the hard drive has had issues in the *past*, they will be added to this number until the drive gets a chance to repair them. Every hard drive on the planet has this statistic and uses it in the same way (at least, every one of the thousands I've checked). It'll save you a LOT of time and lead to much more accurate diagnosis of hard drive issues!
It's been almost a year 
Ouch. Sorry. OK, I'm still alive, and I kinda... felt bad even checking out this page again after letting it sit for so long. I've been getting trickles of donations here and there, but got REALLY depressed by a guy that sent a $5 donation, then instantly sent a dispute saying "I couldn't find where to put the address for the CD"... I couldn't smack him with a refund hard enough. The CDs thing is long gone, it was only supposed to be for that one mo...nth! Yikes... I've let this thing go to waste.
OK, so here's where we're at now. Same place I was at the beginning of the year, not much has changed. Been too bogged down with life and all, best way I can put it. I've been running the same "alpha" version of Mini7 for months, not even fixing a big hole that causes it to crash if I don't cancel a dialog box in 5 seconds after booting. That's why there's not really been much activity here.
With over a thousand more "likes" since I last posted anything (holy crap!), I figure I've got to stop in and thank (and greet - HI!!) all the people that have found this Boot CD since then. What do you think of it? I'm not really into adding new tools "by request", but rather asking what functionality is missing - some popular tools suck, while some uncommon tools (like GImageX!) are lifesavers with unique functionality! I'd like to cram the most functionality into the least tools possible, so I work on function, not specific tools. I'd love to get some feedback on that, though!
Now, let's see if I can stay on it this time! Maybe with a little push in maintaining this page, v5.0 might just happen sooner rather than later
Hey! I finally got around to the discs I promised, but only 2 people provided their address in the PayPal notes. It doesn't give me your address for a donation, for some reason. So, eh... message the page with an address if you actually want a disc
Or, if you hadn't seen, get a printed copy of the disc with any donation over $5! See the last post for details. And a huge thanks to everyone that pitched in.
As a lone tech geek, amid the holiday PC-repair market slum where everyone just feels like buying a new one, this Christmas is shaping up to be a pretty dull one here at the Falcon home. More bills than I have the money to pay, and the roommate is just as poor as I am. I hate rattling the tip jar, and I feel like I'd be just being a bum if I didn't offer something in return. It's been over a couple months since the last donation came through, so maybe people don't even know
So for each donation ($5 or more, US-only, obvs), I'll print up and mail off a shiny, full-color print of the latest (v4.61) F4UBCD to the PayPal address provided. I don't know how else I can thank you guys for your support and all... but I hope everyone's holidays have been made just a little merrier with the BootCD!
This took a little work (and far longer than it should've taken to fix)... but I figured the best way to distribute the v4.61 patch is to post it here first. Probably put it up on a torrent site later. It's only 4MB.
Extract all the files to a local drive (like your desktop), then drag the v4.6 ISO onto the patcher EXE. It'll rebuild the ISO with the new files if all goes well, and it's written to catch most errors if things go wrong.
Finally, the IASTOR7 BSOD is gone for good.