Patrick Keenan said:
The restore CD is really overkill. If you have the bootable XP CD with
the recovery console, run :
Patrick...Wow!... just found this group, and boy do you guys get a lot of
posts here. Please forgive my ignorance, since I get a little confused by
terms like restore vs recovery, which are often interchanged incorrectly
IMO -and then there are the terms bootable disc and startup disc, which can
also get confusing - and I have seen other terms used also.
So, would you please explain exactly what you mean by the "bootable XP CD".
I am somewhat computer literate, but get confused with all the different
teminology I have seen (by visiting other newsgroups, forums, web sites,
etc.) regarding "boot discs". I have a new XPsp2 home edition pc, and I had
a milleinium before that (which I made a "startup disc" for in add/remove
programs - so I guess a startup disc is yet another term for boot disc - it
was only a 3-1/2" disquette (less than a meg), and it would get my millenium
to boot by typing "scanreg /restore" at a prompt that you eventually came
to.
For my XP, I immediately made a Compaq "recovery dvd" (it took 2-dvd's)
utilizing the "Compaq recovery cd-dvd creator" in start/programs/pc tools.
This dvd (can also use cd's but it takes 8 or 9 cd's I believe) contains
everything that is on the pc (from the factory), and which is also in the
system recovery partition D:. There is also something called a "Recovery
Tools CD", which I did not burn, since it did not seem necessary, after
reading about it in the "troubleshooting and system recovery guide" that
came with my compaq. I will burn that one to, if you can explain what it
will do, that I can't ultimately achieve by using the "recovery dvd". The
manual said that one of the things the "recovery tools cd" did was to remove
the system recovery partition (drive D), so you could use it - but I'm sure
there is another way of doing that from within the pc once you got it
running using the recovery dvd - am I right - I've never messed around with
partitioning, since I have no need to.
My new XP did not come with any "bootable CD" perse, and I made the
"recovery dvd", as stated above. So please shed some light on what the
"bootable XP CD" is that you refer to (because you said that a "restore Cd
is really overkill" - I assume you mean the "recovery CD" that I mentioned).
Also please provide your comments on the "recovery tools CD", and any other
comments you have on the various terminlogies I have mentioned above.
This looks like a good group, and I have some interesting questions that I
will be posting in the interest of learning more about windows XP and why MS
does some of the things it does. Thanks...Pete