How do you create a bootable XP CD?

[Guest]

Scenario: My Gateway PC is six years plus old and it came with Windows ME
pre-installed. Shortly thereafter I bought the upgrade to WinXP Home edition
and have kept my PC up-to-date since with SP1/SP2 with little or no problems.
A friend has recently had a h/w failure on his PC (corrupt file somewhere)
making me a bit nervous about my own system and how I would recover from such
a h/w failure. So the question is how do I create a bootable XP CD for my
system? Note I also have a Iomega 250Mb zip disk drive so instead can I
create a bootable zip disc? (if you know what I mean). Any help would be much
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[John Wunderlich]

=?Utf-8?B?Sm9jayBNY1NxdWlnZ2xl?=

Scenario: My Gateway PC is six years plus old and it came with
Windows ME pre-installed. Shortly thereafter I bought the upgrade
to WinXP Home edition and have kept my PC up-to-date since with
SP1/SP2 with little or no problems.
A friend has recently had a h/w failure on his PC (corrupt file
somewhere)
making me a bit nervous about my own system and how I would
recover from such a h/w failure. So the question is how do I
create a bootable XP CD for my system? Note I also have a Iomega
250Mb zip disk drive so instead can I create a bootable zip disc?
(if you know what I mean). Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Checkout the freeware "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows"
<http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm>

HTH,
John

 

[Wesley Vogel]

The XP CD is bootable. You have to have your CD drive setup as a boot
device in your BIOS. Read your BIOS manual.

Accessing Motherboard BIOS
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

Create a Boot Disk for XP

Creating a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311073

How To Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595

How to use System files to create a boot disk to guard against being unable
to start Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314079

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

A friend has recently had a h/w failure on his PC (corrupt file somewhere)
making me a bit nervous about my own system and how I would recover from such
a h/w failure. So the question is how do I create a bootable XP CD for my
system? Note I also have a Iomega 250Mb zip disk drive so instead can I
create a bootable zip disc? (if you know what I mean). Any help would be much
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You never mentioned anything about backing up your system on a regular
basis. If you do regular backups, you'll never have to worry.

Buy an external hard drive, or install a second internal one (if you
can).

Get Acronis True Image (not free) and use it to run regular backups.

I am obsessive about backups: I have three internal drives and one
external.

One of the internal drives is used for the creation of nightly images
of my system drive. The other is cloned from my system drive once
weekly (and all data that I am interested in keeping up to date is
copied to the appropriate directories on that drive multiple times a
day using Second Copy).

The external is used to backup my notebook, and to backup my system
drive once a week.

I sleep well at night ;-)

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

BTW... Acronis will write you a bootable CD to use for doing whatever
you want to do with your discs, including restoring from backups.

 

[Rock]

Scenario: My Gateway PC is six years plus old and it came with Windows ME
pre-installed. Shortly thereafter I bought the upgrade to WinXP Home
edition
and have kept my PC up-to-date since with SP1/SP2 with little or no
problems.
A friend has recently had a h/w failure on his PC (corrupt file somewhere)
making me a bit nervous about my own system and how I would recover from
such
a h/w failure. So the question is how do I create a bootable XP CD for my
system? Note I also have a Iomega 250Mb zip disk drive so instead can I
create a bootable zip disc? (if you know what I mean). Any help would be
much
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The XP installation CD is bootable and provides access to the recovery
console, which is a command line interface not an automated repair function,
the in place upgrade function aka repair install, and the tools to
remove/create/format partitions and install the OS. Here are a couple of
reference links:

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654/en-us

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Some of the best insurance you can give yourself to be able to quickly
recover from hardware or OS problems is to use a drive imaging program such
as Acronis True Image Home, version 10, and an external hard drive connected
by USB. ATI will create a compressed image of the drive which can be saved
on the external hard drive. It allows for incremental and differential
imaging, and it will also do file backups. Restores can be done quickly
either of a partition, the complete drive, or individual files.

You don't have to buy one of the preassembled external USB drive kits, it's
much cheaper to buy a hard drive, and a an external drive enclosure, then
connect this by USB. Drives are very low cost these days, get a 300GB drive
for under $100, and enclosures can be had for $20-$50.

 

[Bob Harris]

There are several possibilities.

1. The XP CD is bootable, and be able to run the "recovery console".
Alternatively, the recovery console is obtainable as a multi-floppy disk
image set from Microsoft, who calls it "setup disks". The recovery console
supports a few DOS-like commands and things disk checks and partitioning.
Note that the recovery console may ask for a password, meaning the password
for the original PC administrator, not necessarily the first user defined
under XP. That is often blank. See links below:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec.htm



http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm



http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm (near bottom)



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm (about number 26 in list)




2. If your XP CD is retail (even if upgrade), it can be used to perform a
"repair" installation of XP. This will "refresh the system files, but will
not erase installed programs or personal data. However, it will also not
fix most problems with the XP registry. A repair will remove all XP updates
newer than the date of the CD, and then you will need to re-run windows
update, once XP is back working OK. See links below:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm



http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp



http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Repair-Windows-XP-t138.html


3. As you are probably aware, you could perform a "clean install" using the
XP upgrade CD. However, it will want to see a "proof" of ownership of some
earlier windows than qualifies for the upgrade, such as 98, 98SE, ME, 2000.
For that you must have a CD from one of those, unless they are already
installed on the hard drive. But, a clean install is probably the last
resort, since it will erase all user data and all installed programs on the
partition onto which you re-install XP. This is a good reason to keep
personal data on a separate partition. But, that would not help for
programs, since even if they were installed on a separate partition, some
pieces of them are always installed on C:.

4. The are many bootable CDs that can fix specific problems.

4a. The Ultimate boot CD is pretty good for hardware problems, but
DOS-like. It is free.

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

4b. KNOPPIX is a CD (or DVD) that runs LINUX and can read/write NTFS
partitions. It can rescue data form an XP system to a ZIP or to a USB
drive. It can also be used to fix a few small things, like manually editing
BOOT.INI. KNOPPIX is free, and even the CD version contains a full office
suite, web browser, etc. It could be used instead of XP. It configure
itself to the hardware, and does a better job in that respect than XP (e.g.,
knows about SATA hard drives).

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page

4c. Bart's PE is a bootable CD that you make that runs a portion of XP, so
it looks and feels like XP. It is can do a lot more than the recovery
console, and does not ask questions about passwords. Bart's is free, but
you have to do follow a page or so of instructions to make it work.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Note on CD-images of rescue operating systems: "ISO" files can not be
dragged&dropped onto CDs, not is you want them to function. They must be
written with something like Nero or Easy CD Creator using an option like
"burn from image".

5. The other option is to make disk images or partition images. If the
physical hard drive dies, then no rescue CD will help. I have had good luck
with Acronis True Image (version 8), and also Norton GHOST (version 2003).
One note on images: disk images usually contain the master boot record, but
partition images do not. But, in theory you can use FDISK or the XP
recovery console to write a master boot record, make partitions, etc. Then,
as a separate operation, use the imaging program to perform a restore. I do
this because I have several partitions, and do not wish to backup all of
them all the time. However, if you have one big C:\ drive, then a disk
image would be more convenient. All modern imaging programs perform
compression and many also only backup files, not free space (except by
special request).

 

[Noncompliant]

The XP installation CD is bootable and provides access to the recovery
console, which is a command line interface not an automated repair
function, the in place upgrade function aka repair install, and the tools
to remove/create/format partitions and install the OS. Here are a couple
of reference links:

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654/en-us

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Some of the best insurance you can give yourself to be able to quickly
recover from hardware or OS problems is to use a drive imaging program
such as Acronis True Image Home, version 10, and an external hard drive
connected by USB. ATI will create a compressed image of the drive which
can be saved on the external hard drive. It allows for incremental and
differential imaging, and it will also do file backups. Restores can be
done quickly either of a partition, the complete drive, or individual
files.

You don't have to buy one of the preassembled external USB drive kits,
it's much cheaper to buy a hard drive, and a an external drive enclosure,
then connect this by USB. Drives are very low cost these days, get a
300GB drive for under $100, and enclosures can be had for $20-$50.

Seems its been that way since external USB and/or firewire drives were
introduced. They verify or set a jumper to master (usually that way from
the factory). Connect the ide ribbon cable and power connector. Put in a
few screws to secure the hard drive to the enclosure. Maybe format the hard
drive FAT32 while in mass formatting machine. Put it in box with some
paperwork, possibly supply the appropriate cable, and shrinkwrap it. Put it
on a shelf until the next ship/plane leaves for the USA. Probable labor,
material and packaging cost is, my guess, maybe 5 bucks a unit max over the
hard drive and bare enclosure cost.