Creating UBCD4Win CD

I was reading the threads about UBCD4Win.

Now that I have completed the How to Protect Yourself from Malware! sticky and I have everything on my computer up-to-date and working well (thanks to Chaslang, TeeCee, dr.moriarty and Plodr), I’d like to do some more proactive and preventative measures. I’d like to try making one of these boot CDs while I am not at all stressed and frantic because of malware. I figure if I learn how to make one now, I’ll have it for future use should I need it, and even if it becomes outdated, I’ll know the steps to make a newer version.

When the directions say to use a Windows boot CD, exactly what does that mean? I have three Windows disks, and I am wondering which I can use for this purpose.

1. I have a Lenovo Product Recovery CD-ROM, Win XP Home ULCPC (not sure what that means?) Edition SP2 that came with my Lenovo 3000 H200. It says on it “Boot your computer from this CD-ROM and start the recovery process.” I did not try booting from it but I did look at and see that it has setup.exe and many folders, including $oem$ and i386 containing System 32.

I opened the Valueadd folder and installed NTbackup from it onto my computer. I understand it may not always work that well for backup, but I thought it would be another option. I put Acronis True Image on some time ago and I am going to make some more backup copies while everything is working well.

2. I have a Win XP Home Version 2002 with SP2 retail box upgrade CD that I used to upgrade an old Win 98SE computer.

3. I have a new, never opened Win XP Home OEM CD SP3, says it is DSP OEI CD. I bought this at Fry’s, then I read something about having to have a preinstallation kit before I could actually install this on a computer. It did not come with one.

Bet you can guess that I like XP and never had any desire to try Vista! Those of you who have answered my questions before know that I prefer to be cautious. I always like to know what to expect and to do things the right way the first time, so that I don’t create extra work for myself by doing something that I shouldn’t have. But I am more than willing to try something new with expert guidance and answers to my questions along the way.