I have a friend who did computer repair from home. Recently he had a computer that he could not find the problem with. I told him to use puppy linux. That in itself was funny because he hates linux. Anyways in the end he refused to use Puppy. He had to replace a customer's hdd (which wasn't the problem) and still had to fix the computer again.
Now if I remember correctly pretty old puppy is my back up buddy when doing a repair especially when I have a WTF is wrong moment.
Last time I checked my puppy works amazingly well for hooking into a windows computer...(sorry never had to use it for a linux fix) and seeing if the hdd was the problem.
I know on windows xp and earlier you can peek into a hdd without needing any credentials however I have not tried this with windows Vista/7.
Why do people sweep this powerful little OS under the rug so quickly?