DLC Boot

About this release

DLC Boot is the stick you keep in a drawer for the day a machine will not start. It boots into a working Windows environment from removable media, ignores whatever state the installed system is in, and hands you a menu of every repair tool that matters in one place. Partition work, imaging, password resets, data recovery, hardware tests, driver injection and a file manager that can see the drive the operating system has given up on.

The partition section alone covers most of the reason people build a rescue stick. Resize, move, merge, split, convert between MBR and GPT without data loss, rebuild a broken boot record, repair a partition table, and recover partitions that have gone missing from the table entirely. The imaging tools sit beside them so you can take a full disk image before you touch anything, which is the correct first move on any drive you care about.

Password and account tools reset local Windows accounts, clear or replace the account database entries, and unlock accounts that have been disabled. Diagnostics cover memory testing, drive surface scanning with SMART reporting, processor stress testing and temperature monitoring, which between them identify the failing hardware behind most intermittent faults.

The environment itself is a full graphical desktop rather than a command prompt. Network drivers load so you can pull a file down or push a backup to a share, storage drivers cover modern NVMe controllers, and the interface is readable on a high resolution panel. Both legacy BIOS and UEFI boot paths are built into the same image.

What you get

• Bootable graphical rescue desktop with network and NVMe storage drivers loaded
• Partition resize, move, merge, split and MBR to GPT conversion without data loss
• Boot record repair and partition table recovery for drives that vanished from the list
• Full disk and partition imaging with restore to dissimilar hardware
• Local Windows account password reset and account unlock tools
• Data recovery for deleted files and formatted volumes
• Memory testing, drive surface scanning with SMART reporting and processor stress tests
• Driver backup, restore and injection into an offline installation
• Offline registry editing and startup entry cleanup
• Both legacy BIOS and UEFI boot paths in a single image

Changes in this build

• Storage driver set expanded for current NVMe and RAID controllers
• Imaging component updated with faster compression on high core count processors
• Interface scaling fixed on high resolution panels
• Several outdated tools removed and their replacements added
• Boot menu reorganised so the common tasks are on the first screen

Installation

Read the whole list before you start. Most of the reports that come into the desk about this title turn out to be a step taken out of order.

1. Write the image to a USB stick of at least eight gigabytes with a tool that supports both boot paths.
2. Do not extract the image and copy the files by hand. It will not boot.
3. Enter the machine firmware and set the stick as the boot device.
4. If the machine has secure boot enabled, turn it off for the session.
5. Pick the environment that matches the hardware from the first menu.
6. Take a full disk image before you use any partition tool on a drive you care about.

System requirements

Processor	Any 64 bit processor, 32 bit supported through the legacy menu
Memory	2 GB minimum, 4 GB recommended for the graphical environment
Graphics	Any adapter with a standard VESA mode
Storage	8 GB USB stick or larger
Firmware	Legacy BIOS or UEFI, secure boot disabled

Notes from the desk

Full details

Title	DLC Boot
Developer	Tran Duy Linh
Version	4.3
Category	Utilities & Tools
Release type	Full version
Operating system	Bootable environment, services Windows 11 through Windows 7
Architecture	x86 / x64
Interface language	Multilingual
Archive size	3.41 GB
File name	dlc_boot_v4.3_x86_x64.iso
Shelf updated	1 week ago
Total downloads	193,146

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