Discussion on:

The five best emergency toolkit apps to have in the field

The only problem with ComboFix is that it does not get along with AVG. Malwarebytes is a great alternative.

Combofix is just one blade of the tech support "Swiss Army Knife". In addition to AVG and Malwarebytes (and SuperAnti-Spyware), that's a winning combination.

We've done EXTENSIVE testing of AV products and even McAfee (which I hate) had done a better job at finding and eliminating malware than Malwarebytes. Microsoft's Safety Scanner tested as the best stand-alone scanner with a fantastic find/kill rate.

When I changed my Virus checker for VIPRE and had problems with email, The techs at VIPRE had me remove Malwarebytes, superantispyware, Spybot search and destroy. Now that I have my system back running with VIPRE and a different firewall (Comodo) I have not seen the need to put these back. Machine runs faster now.

Knoppix is the name of a linux distro that happens to have some tools on it. How does it compare with Backtrack or Helix?

It's a good article. I will add some of these to my toolbox. And thanks to everybody for all the comments.

I have become sold on Hiren's Boot CD http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd. The opening interface takes a few tries to get right, but the plethora of tools on a single disk has me sold. Need a live Linux partition tool, its there. XP virus removal, yep. Want an XP-esque desktop to copy files to a new hard drive, yep. Reset passwords, yep.

And one more bonus, I learned about it at TechRepublic.

I use this as well and have been quite pleased with it.

I'm adding these five to my tool-kit.

I think that under 3: PuTTY, you meant "remote machine" rather than "remove machine."

I am constantly amazed at how useful my subscription to Techrepublic is. I was only thinking about my USB toolkit the other day and here we are - an article on the best e-tools out there. Brilliant.

I'm sorry, which of these programs will restore/inspect the partition table(s) or fix/rebuild/inspect an MBR or boot record???
In the real world, you need much more than your recommendations.

I am not familiar with what is on the Knoppix and Hirens distributions.
There is no one tool that does everything I like UBCD it has many tools on, including partition managers (Zenith545).
You also need a tool for cracking windows passwords.

I use the SARDU Multiboot USB builder (http://www.sarducd.it/) to create a wonderful Swiss Army USB drive. Okay, Italian. It can create a multiboot environment for multiple anti-malware engines, utility discs such as Hiren's or UBCD, Live Linux distros, and Windows PE's, recovery discs and installers. A full blown USB drive is over 16 GB, but it will have pretty much everything one could ever need. Password hacking, got it. Drive recovery, done. Want to show off Linux Mint or Ubuntu? It's in there.

I usually carry two drives; one to use, and the other to hand to whoever's computer I'm fixing because I know they are going to ask for one.

I second the use of SARDU. I have a 16GB SARDU drive that I keep with me wherever I go. It has been a life saver on more than one occasion when a system or external drive would not cooperate.