Who is Hiren and what is their Boot CD all about?
Hiren is the Banksy of the IT Support world. Due to the nature of the original CD, nobody to this day knows for sure who he is? Is Hiren his real name? Was it just one person or a team of people creating this legendary CD? Nobody knows!
So, what is Hirens Boot CD? Put simply it's a suite of useful utilities all on one disc that IT Technicians could use to quickly resolve various faults on computers to get them back up and running ASAP.
From password resets to disk partitioning and disk cloning - even data recovery and virus removal tools were included.
Original Release Date
The first documented release date of the HBCD is April 16th 2004 and updated versions of the CD continued to be released up until 2012 when the final classic release (v15.2) was uploaded to their site (www.hiren.info).
Dubious Software
Not all of the software included on the original HBCD was technically legal (one reason nobody knows for sure who Hiren really is).
So why was this? Well, any Technician worth their salt in 2004 would have been Using Norton/Symantec Ghost for cloning their computers and would have paid for a legal version of the software which they would often store in one of these:
In this type of CD wallet we would have legal copies of our volume license installation discs for Windows NT and Windows 9x and XP - along with the Office programs we used. Then there would be many utilities that we'd need to use from time to time, all on individual discs.
What the Hirens Boot CD did was to amalgamate all the useful utilities we used on to one CD along with introducing us to new utilities we'd never seen before.
The grey area of 'dubious' software stops being grey when you realise not every one would have a licensed copy of Norton/Symantec Ghost but it was on the CD anyway and people would use it.
What Happened To The HBCD?
After the final release in 2012 things went a bit quiet and IT Technicians around the globe started to miss this legendary CD that had been helping them fix PCs since 2004. After 6 years of silence, in 2018 the first 'enthusiasts release' of HBCD came about and it was based on the Windows 10 PE (Preinstallation Environment) rather than the (much) older MiniXP that the previous versions were based on.
The other key difference is none of the previous 'dubious' software was included (mainly because things had moved on and things like Norton/Symantec Ghost were no longer used/needed) - so from 2018 onwards all the software found on the Hirens Boot CD was 100% legal. Some are full Open Source packages, others are the Free Trials that don't give you the full features, but do give you enough options to be able to fix a computer.
Hirens Boot CD lives on at a different URL to the original:
What Version Should I Use For Retro Computers?
Version 15.2 is the last one to use the Mini Windows XP operating system so it is this one I shall be using to resolve issues with the Retro Laptops that I have and can be downloaded here: