On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 11:48 +0200, Ioannis Vranos wrote: > > Some other rescue CDs that may be of use: > > http://www.sysresccd.org > > http://www.lnx-bbc.org > > http://cdlinux.berlios.de > I always carry a Knoppix CD with me. Knoppix has very good hardware detection, and I can usually get a system booted with this and look at partitions, filesystems, re-run Lilo etc. Another very good tool is Stresslinux. This is a bootable CD distribution, you can use it on a USB stick which I do, or you can PXE boot it. http://www.stresslinux.org Stresslinux has lots of tools for motherboard diagnostics, cpuburn, bonnie++, smartmon, memtest