One of my favorite techniques for rescuing Windows systems that won't boot normally or in safe mode is to try booting them from a CD-ROM, because what I care about most at this point is the data on the system. Sometimes I use a Windows CD, especially when I think the problem is corrupted system software that can be repaired with a reinstall without affecting the data files; sometimes I use one of the Linux Live For $100 you can buy Selkie Rescue, which is basically a stripped-down Linux Live CD that has been tailored for the purpose of creating readable Samba shares to the system’s hard disks. How is it better than a free Linux Live CD? I asked that very question and got this answer from Jonathan Lyster, CTO of Tugboat Enterprises. Linux live CDs are designed to demo Linux on a functioning computer; they are not meant to work on a computer that has begun to fail. As such, they have limitations: They use the full resources of a video card; if a video card has begun to fail, for example the components which enable the full color set and high resolution, a typical live CD will fail. Selkie was deliberately built to avoid using any components which don’t have a direct bearing on copying files safely to a recovery computer. This means a computer failure caused by a bad audio chip on the motherboard will not affect Selkie. (Selkie doesn’t include audio components.) Most live CDs can be booted to a command prompt — but at this point the user requires technical knowledge of Linux in order to use the disc. Selkie was designed with ultimate simplicity in mind. The user doesn’t need any knowledge of computers or networking — Selkie handles all of it. Selkie can literally be brought from boot-up being making all files available to the network in as little as three taps of the ENTER key.I tried booting a Selkie CD in the oldest machine that still lives in my office, a 333 MHz Celeron box with 64 MB of RAM that runs Windows NT 4.0 Workstation SP6. I rarely bother to boot it up: it’s only still here for an occasional software compatibility test. The Selkie CD came right up, and as Jonathan said it took 3 taps of the Enter key and a couple of minutes, and then I had shares on my network, in the correct workgroup, that showed me the files on the box from my other computers. I could also see a log of the hardware detected by Selkie, and a log of Selkie system messages. Very impressive. In fact, there was nothing wrong with that box: I had no trouble rebooting it to Windows NT, and seeing the same disks on the network. But it’s still nice to know that I have an easy way to get at the data on any of my systems if they ever become unbootable. I didn’t use it, but the Selkie Rescue box also contains a Cat 5 crossover cable. That’s handy if you don’t have a network hub, but do have another computer with an Ethernet port. There’s also a manual in the box, but I didn’t use that, either. Even I can press Enter three times. Software Development