Emergency Boot Flopy?

[Ergobob]

Hello,

I am trying to make an emergency boot floppy for WinXP Pro SP2.

Following an article in PCWorld, I activated the Backup utility, selected
Advanced and started the Automated System Recovery Wizard. After it analyzed
my commuter it wants to backup over 6 Million bytes which would take a lot
of floppies.

Does this seem right? I would have expected a single floppy with just the
system files on it.

How do you do an emergency floppy?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[Eric McG]

This may be what you're looking for:

How to use System files to create a boot disk to guard against being unable to
start Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314079

 

[Jerry]

Why? The XP CD is bootable.

 

[D.R.]

Hello,

I am trying to make an emergency boot floppy for WinXP Pro SP2.

Following an article in PCWorld, I activated the Backup utility, selected
Advanced and started the Automated System Recovery Wizard. After it analyzed
my commuter it wants to backup over 6 Million bytes which would take a lot
of floppies.

About 5 floppies will do it. 6 million bytes = 6000kb = 6MB. Floppies hold
1.4MB.

 

[Ergobob]

So does it make no sense to do the system backup given the bootable CD?

Bob

 

[CZ]

Why? The XP CD is bootable.

Jerry:

The XP CD does not boot into an op system, the floppy boot disk in the
following URL allows you to boot into the XP op system that is installed on
your hard disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314079

OT: Ken Blake: the above URL is for the same floppy that you tried about a
month ago.

 

[Ergobob]

Wouldn't the Automated System Recovery backup do that also or do they serve
different purposes?

Bob

 

[Alex Nichol]

I am trying to make an emergency boot floppy for WinXP Pro SP2.

Following an article in PCWorld, I activated the Backup utility, selected
Advanced and started the Automated System Recovery Wizard. After it analyzed
my commuter it wants to backup over 6 Million bytes which would take a lot
of floppies.

Does this seem right? I would have expected a single floppy with just the
system files on it.

Normally in XP you do not need an emergency boot floppy; you boot the XP
CD itself, and either use Setup or the 'Recovery' mode (immediate R
option - search on "Recovery Console Commands" in Help and Support)

You can get a program at
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;310994
that will generate a set of six floppies *if* you positively cannot boot
a CD - it loads no more than you get if you do boot the CD

The ASR is for use with a complete backup to restore the system's state
if you rebuild after a total crash. It is IMO not a very good way to
achieve that these days; I use an Image backup made to a DVD disk (or
set, but my system's partition compresses onto one)

 

[Ergobob]

Normally in XP you do not need an emergency boot floppy; you boot the XP
CD itself, and either use Setup or the 'Recovery' mode (immediate R
option - search on "Recovery Console Commands" in Help and Support)

You can get a program at
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;310994
that will generate a set of six floppies *if* you positively cannot boot
a CD - it loads no more than you get if you do boot the CD

The ASR is for use with a complete backup to restore the system's state
if you rebuild after a total crash. It is IMO not a very good way to
achieve that these days; I use an Image backup made to a DVD disk (or
set, but my system's partition compresses onto one)

Thanks Alex. I knew something was wrong when I saw the ABS backup being 6
Billion Bytes. Lots more than 6 floppies. I was just trying to prepare for
the worse but it looks like there are other boot options in the event of a
failure.

Bob

 

[CZ]

Normally in XP you do not need an emergency boot floppy; you boot the XP
CD itself, and either use Setup or the 'Recovery' mode (immediate R
option - search on "Recovery Console Commands" in Help and Support)

Alex:

Advantages of the bootup bypass floppy over booting via the XP CD.
Floppy will have your complete boot.ini:
The bootcfg cmd (via XP CD boot) may not completely rebuild your boot.ini:
Bootcfg cmd limitations:
It does not find Win9x vols.
It does not find an installed Recover Console.
It does not find more that 3 or 4 installed NT based op system (impt if you
milti-boot).

The floppy allows you to boot into a functioning XP op system, a XP CD boot
does not do that.

The floppy can be used to quickly tshoot some suspected problems with MBR,
boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com.


Note: URL for the bootup bypass floppy as discussed by MS:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314079

 

[Bruce Chambers]

There's normally no need for an ERD (Emergency Rescue Disk) with
WinXP. The WinXP installation CD is bootable, and provides access to
the Recovery Console.

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314058


--

Bruce Chambers

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