Boot from 6 floppy disks?

[Guest]

I have a Toshiba laptop that's 9 months old and I'm on my 3rd round of fixing the config/system. It came with Toshiba "recovery" CDs, not Windows CDs, of course. The Toshiba CDs offer "wipe the hard drive and start over completely fresh" as the ONLY "repair" choice using those CDs. So I have been using the 6 floppy disk boot start up every time and it's a real drag

Is there any way to create or buy a boot CD that will provide me with the Recovery Console functionality without buying the entire Windows XP Retail version? Can I use a boot CD from an earlier version of Windows, just to run the console

Thank you for any help. (And anybody's idea of why my config/system keeps giving me "not found or corrupted" boot errors would be appreciated, too! It's happened when I've made no new installs or not changed drivers...I'm behind a firewall and running Norton yadda yadda yadda.

 

[D.Currie]

I have a Toshiba laptop that's 9 months old and I'm on my 3rd round of

fixing the config/system. It came with Toshiba "recovery" CDs, not Windows
CDs, of course. The Toshiba CDs offer "wipe the hard drive and start over
completely fresh" as the ONLY "repair" choice using those CDs. So I have
been using the 6 floppy disk boot start up every time and it's a real drag.

Is there any way to create or buy a boot CD that will provide me with the

Recovery Console functionality without buying the entire Windows XP Retail
version? Can I use a boot CD from an earlier version of Windows, just to run
the console?

Thank you for any help. (And anybody's idea of why my config/system keeps

giving me "not found or corrupted" boot errors would be appreciated, too!
It's happened when I've made no new installs or not changed drivers...I'm
behind a firewall and running Norton yadda yadda yadda.)
You can install the recovery console as a bootup option. It's been a long
time since I've done it, so I don't recall the exact steps, but I believe
the directions are in Help & Support.