+Bob+ said:
It's company (corporate) supplied. They don't care to supply anything
bootable and believe recovery is best served by sending the system to
them and having them reload it from scratch. (Not really the solution
I'm looking for). Anyway to create my own bootable CD and then do a
repair?
FWIW - the same issue exists with a lot of laptop manufacturers who
refuse to supply CD's for OS's (e.g. Toshiba). You get the cab files
but no CD and no prescribed way to create them.
Any other solutions?
There's actually another major issue here, which can override the practical
concerns. If you have a corporate-supplied XP CD, you almost certainly
also have a corporate-supplied computer.
With both of those in place, the corporation also has an IT department that
they expect - possibly require - you to use in case of problems. They are
paid (a lot) to do this. You aren't.
While there are a lot of circumstances where it's just easier to do the
repairs yourself, in this situation, corporate policy may say that you may
not. That's what they pay the IT group for, and it's not what they pay
you to do. Doing the work youself can annoy the IT group, and they can in
turn annoy your managers.
Performing the work yourself can be what's known as a CLM.
As to recovery CDs for laptops, yes, many are pre-configured as images with
the drivers specific to the laptop hardware included, don't use the XP
install, and you can't do a repair install with them.
So, you may be in an inconvenient sitiuation, but corporate policy isn't
always there for your convenience. If it delays your work... well, it's
their policy, not yours.
If you need the files to actually commit work while they have the PC, that
is easy to do. Get a USB2 drive adapter or case, and connect the drive to
another XP system and copy the files. However, if there are corporate
confidentiality issues, it's very important to respect those; failing to do
that can go beyond CLM to CTM territory.
HTH
-pk
XP on a CD. However, it's not a bootable XP CD, it's