Which Live CD for checking hardware and secure internet browsing (3G modems support)?

[sajunky]

Basic hardware checking, inspecting partitions, maybe basic data recovery, USB troubleshooting (to rule out Windows driver problems).

Good support for USB modems.

[ginggs]

Basic hardware checking, inspecting partitions, maybe basic data recovery, USB troubleshooting (to rule out Windows driver problems).

Good support for USB modems.

I use the latest Ubuntu live CD.

[Electron1]

I use Hiren's bootcd ...It has some dos and linux based utils, and you can boot into MiniXp with many useful utilities.

[sajunky]

Thanks. There are cases I would rather avoid messing up with Windows partition. Will try Ubuntu first, but will look at other options.

Is this a proper link, option 2?
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

[ginggs]

Thanks. There are cases I would rather avoid messing up with Windows partition. Will try Ubuntu first, but will look at other options.

Is this a proper link, option 2?
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

Quicker to get from a local mirror, go to:
http://ubuntu.mirror.ac.za/ubuntu-release/11.10/
and download either
ubuntu-11.10-desktop-i386.iso (if you want a CD that will work on 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs)
or
ubuntu-11.10-desktop-amd64.iso (if you are sure you only have systems with 64-bit CPUs)

The latest beta is available here:
http://ubuntu.mirror.ac.za/ubuntu-release/12.04/
(beta 2 coming tomorrow (2012/03/29) and final release on 2012/04/26)

[sajunky]

I use Hiren's bootcd ...It has some dos and linux based utils, and you can boot into MiniXp with many useful utilities.

Thanks, downloaded Hiren's too. Actually couple utilities currently on use I have on separate images. Good to have it in one place.