By Alan Henry, Lifehacker – February 19, 2013 at 05:15PM
If your system won’t boot, you’re running into strange PC performance problems, or you want to test your hardware for failures, you’ll need a good system rescue disc to save the day. With the right one, you can boot to it, use your machine like normal if you have to, scan for viruses, test your hardware, fix partitions, repair your operating system, and more. We asked you last week which rescue discs you thought were the best—the most flexible, functional, and packed with the most useful tools. Then we took at look at the five best system rescue discs based on your nominations. Now we’re back to highlight the winner.
Without a doubt, HIren’s BootCD was the community favorite, bringing in the most nominees in the call for contenders thread and over 59% of the overall vote in the poll.
In second place with over 16% of the votes cast was the ever-popular Ultimate Boot CD, which many of you noted has been in your PC repair toolkit for years and years. Behind it in third with just over 8% of the vote was the Trinity Rescue Kit, and behind it by a mere seven votes with exactly 8% of the votes cast was the aptly named System Rescue CD. Bringing up the rear with just under 8% of the vote, and behind third and fourth place by 24 and 17 votes respectively, was Knoppix, the Linux live CD that’s packed with troubleshooting utilities as well as productivity tools.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it’s not because we hate it—it’s because it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!