The 911 Rescue CD - The Admin Swiss Army Knife

Abstract

The 911 Rescue CD is the Admin's Swiss Army knife it is an integrated set of software designed for the emergency situations when the system doesn't function properly or when assembling a new PC and no pre-installed operating systems or software is found.

The 911 Boot Disks are a set of startup disks based on the ModBoot framework, they have mouse-driven user interface and greatly simplify the process of setting up and recovering failed systems, and allow the user to diagnose problems and assist in the fixing steps.

What's New :

20 May 2005

The Discussion Board has been hacked (without announced reasons), this hacking attack has been done from an IP address which traces back to Vietnam, between 4:07 PM and 5:35 PM (GMT) in May 18.

The attacker changed the structure of the categories, completely removed all the posts inside some forums, and changed various unspecified board settings (also changed forum's skin to reflect the hack).

I've tried for 3 hours to restore the forum so we don't need a complete Database restore, but failed because of the deleted posts; so I restored the original theme, locked down all the Admin accounts, changed their passwords, and contacted the webmaster to restore the last backup available (it dates back to May 6 2005).

The webmaster restored the backup correctly, and the Forum is back after 48 hours of disruption, I kept it offline for some time to check on all the options.

In some future time (in the next 15 days, I hope) I will upgrade the Invision Board software to the latest free version I have (we currently use v1.2, I have the 1.3 code) unfortunately, the current version (v2.1) is a commercial version and is not free anymore.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope such action will not to be done again.

26 August 2004

The server was offline for more than a week, I'm very sorry for the interruptions, we are going on a new server now, I hope this fixes things up.
For now, the server is going without the forums, when I get in contact with the original server to get the forums database, the forums will be back up, sorry for the inconvenience.

Another release candidate for the 911 CD, this one with little additions, but with many small refinements, mostly in documentation, help files and finishing touches.

The 911 CD Builder v2.0.6 RC released, now with a German language option (the setup & many screens and options in the actual 911 CD are now localized in German language, it is the same as the GLP here, the translation is made by Mæster, thank you), a new option to password protect the created CD, the ability to optimize the created ISO file (similar to the CDIMAGE utility optimization), also all the tools of Acronis now work correctly, a help file, and some bugfixes.

One of this reasons this new release was much delayed is because I wanted to make sure that it is compatible with the final build of the much-awaited Windows xp SP2 (the RTM build).
Another reason is because the new release was supposed to use my new CDShell scripts that uses the new mouse support, but incompatibilities between the current BCDW module and the most recent builds of CDShell didn't allow me to run BCDW (to support the Acronis tools), so I returned to an older build of the scripts that don't support the mouse input.

The 911 CD Builder v1.5.4 released, with some small refinements.
911Menu updated to v4.0 Beta8, new tools include Paragon Partition Manager.
devload updated to v4.0 Beta8, now loads and unloads the mouse driver for its windows automatically.
SetupNT updated to v1.1i, used the fix Mæster published in his 911 German Language pack.

A new addition to the 911 CD project is a nice looking User's guide, it serves as a getting started guide that can be used by any new user, it contains info about the best features of 911 CD, gives the details about exploring the 911 CD environment, and it includes detailed step-by-step info about the installation and the creation process of your own 911 CD.

Also another addition are the 911 CD label art & jewel case cover, they give your generated CD a more professional appearance, and gives your CD a highly distinctive look over (hand-written) burned CDs.

For the site news, we have had some troubles in the site recently (sometimes related to DNS, others related to Apache, and sometimes related to MySQL), but I hope all these problems are now elimitated or will be eliminated soon.

Let me welcome Mr Mark Schamber, our new host; Mr Mark is donating unlimited diskspace/bandwidth for the website and forums, we are now in the test phase to see if the server can handle our site requirements (we are now approaching 50 GB of monthly bandwidth just for the website and the forums, this is without the downloads section, which is approaching 40~60 GB; I hope the server can handle the site without major problems).

I would like to thank Mr Eddie L. Seelke for hosting the site for free from July 2003 to August 2004, he was very kind to donate the hosting plan and to do most of the administrative work.

And for the personal part, I have a request for you all, there is a new donation link in the Contact Me page, if you find my work useful for you, or you think you could contribute to 911 CD project with your money, then donate.
For now, I'd like to thank Mr. Ben Hayes for the first donation (a CD-RW drive, which is btw, my first RW drive, I previously relied on VMware in all of my development, and on my friends to create some CDs for me).

11 Dec 2003

It has been very long since I last updated the website, I'm very sorry for that, but I hope that this update will be good enough.

The 911 Rescue CD project is now in a nearly mature state as most of the tools and options that were requested and could be done are now present in it and the project has met most of its mile stones to the final stage in the version 4.0i (as much as it could be done), it has seen a very long beta program for the version 4.0i (about 16 months so far), it has also seen a great advancement in the functionality and the breadth of tools and technologies that can be used from the CD menus, and most importantly the project has seen a great increase in stability (in both the building software, and in the actual software on the CD).

So this release is considered a release candidate, the next release will be a final release for the version 4.0i, there will be a comprehensive manual and all the tools used in the project will be marked as final, so I can start to concentrate on the next version objectives (the Support for Windows PE and the usage of a capable Live-Linux distro, also a new universal CD Builder is planned).

Now, to the new tools/features in this update:
The 911 CD Builder v2.0.5 RC released, hotfix integrating options removed, better Windows 2000/XP Setup support, can now build the Windows 2000/XP Setup Assistant module, and now have better error handling code (less Runtime Errors will appear).

The 911 Disk Builder v1.5.3 released, now the extraction method of Import_DOS.cmd is integrated in the default extraction method, and Import_DOS.cmd now shows the missing files if the extraction method failed.

The 911 CD Main Menu is now based on the latest CDShell builds, and now its default option is to boot from the Hard disk after 15 seconds, it adds the support for the Acronis Utilities, and includes the ability to easily edit the script menu options, and also the ability to dynamically remove the menu options that their tools don't exist on the current compilation of the CD.

The 911 Rescue Software disk now includes the ability to select if to load EMM386 or not, and makes a 16MB RAM Drive instead of the ModBoot default 8MB (to accumulate the Antivirus engines copied to it).

911Menu updated to v4.0 Beta7, new tools has been added : "AMI Diag", "Active@ Kill Disk", "Reset CMOS info"; also includes menu entries for the NTFSDOS Pro; also many other tools version number and loading method updated to their latest releases; now includes the ability to detect EMM386 and display warning messages regarding it; and some bugs has been fixed.
DevLoad updated to v4.0 Beta7, new features include the support for international keyboard layouts other than the standard US QWERTY keyboard; also can select time zone info for NTFSDOS Pro; and can load support for external USB mass storage devices (i.e. external Hard drives, CDROM drives).
ViruScan updated to v1.3i, it can now use the alternate version of NTFSDOS Pro to enable support for NTFS partitions, copies the Antivirus engines to the RAM drive before running them; and fixes a bug in the "Display report" option in PCcillin and F-Prot.
SetupNT is introduced, it enables the same interface of the Windows Setup Assistant to run the Windows 2000/XP Setup programs, with the options to provide defaults or to run the setup in fully automated mode.
AUTOPART, EPROMPT, SHSUCDX and UTILS are updated to use the latest releases of software included in them.

13 Jul 2003

The website was offline for about a week, due to DNS problems in the Server, but thank God it is online again.

The Forum will be offline until the host transaction process is complete, hope to finish it today.

I would like to thank Mr. Nicolas Ritouet for hosting the 911 CD website and the Bootable CD Forum (the joint forum for http://www.nu2.nu, http://www.bootscriptor.org/ and http://www911cd.net) for full 7 months, he was very generous to offer the 911CD website a dedicated server for free and registered the www.911cd.net name for the site to use. :-)

And I would like to welcome Mr Eddie L. Seelke, the Admin of the Deluxe Technologies Hosting company, and the new host of the 911 CD website, from now on, we will be using his servers.

10 Apr 2003

The website is re-structured for better navigation, also slight modifications in the design.
The new Artwork section is added, hope you like it.

The 911 CD Builder v2.0.4 released, fixes the ERD Commander 2002 Patching Error and uses a new safer installer/uninstaller.
911Menu updated to v4.0 Beta6, new tools has been added "Winternals Disk Commander", "SavePart" (a freeware Disk Imaging software), "CMOS Password Cracker", "TestDisk" and updated the Maxtor MaxBlast option.
The 911 CD Main Menu added support for MemTest x86 and changed the location of the Tomsrtbt Linux.

The 911 Disk Builder v1.5.2 released, now supports Netware bootdisks (Erwin Veermans's NwDsk) and ODI16/ODI32 drivers.

28 Feb 2003

The 911 Rescue CD has been featured Scot Finnie's newsletter, one of the very well respected e-mail newsletters about technology and Windows, it is an honour to the website and to the 911 Rescue CD.

The 911 CD Builder v2.0 beta3 is now available.

The main download location is still offline, but thanks to Jas Batra for providing me with the necessary PHP scripts, it will return online soon, in the meantime, all the broken links are now repaired.

20 Feb 2003

A temporary download location is provided until the download mirror is back online.

7 Feb 2003

The website now have a domain name, it is now http://www.911cd.net, thank you very much Nicolas Ritouet (he bought me the domain and now hosts the full website), that means no more popup ads from Tripod, and no more spyware from PcPages.com.

I'm currently inspecting the "Unexpected Error" problem in the CD Builder v2.0, it turns out to be a software incompatibility with an unknown DLL, so for anybody that experiences this error, please send a complete list of your installed software.

29 Jan 2003

The 911 CD Builder v2.0 updated from Beta1 to Beta2, as usual Beta1 is nearly useless, the new build works correctly.

more . . .

Special Thanks

As the special thanks list expanded to include lots of people, here it is.

Visitor numbersince July 29 2002.

Hosted by Mark Schamber | Download by MostlyCreativeWorkshop & Yeek.com | Menu by Milonic Menu