Many OEM XP installs are (as you indicated) not provided w/ a retail XP
installation CD. Instead, you receive a recovery CD, which usually restores
an "image copy" the XP installation as originally shipped. If you use the
recovery CD, it typically deletes the current installation, and restores the
image copy in its place. The image copy itself is either stored on the CD
(or perhaps second CD), or in some cases, it's on the HD in a hidden
partition.
Bottomline, if you have this type of situation, you don't have any means to
install XP from the i386 directory since one does not exist. If for some
reason you *do* have a *complete* i386 installation directory, then yes,
such a reinstall from DOS would be theoretically possible (usingn the Repair
installation option if you are merely trying to fix, not replace, your
current installation).
But frankly, I would be very doubtful this is possible. OEMs generally do
not provide a *real*, retail version of XP, but a highly modified one (if
for no other reason than to make sure it won't run on other PCs!). That's
why I hate OEM versions, as soon as you need to do something slightly out of
the ordinary, you're stuck. Your only typical option is to start over (do a
recovery), which only places you back where you started when the unit was
shipped. If you really want/need to repair the installation, and a repair
installation option is not made available to you from your recovery CD, nor
is the i386 directory really a full, retail XP install, then you have little
choice but to purchase a retail boxed copy of XP (Home or Pro). Yes, this
stinks, but that's the price you pay for relying on an OEM version of the
OS.
Jim
I may have to Reinstall XP home on my nfts drive to fix
a bad modem driver that I can not remove. I have a Sony
Viao and they didn't give me a real XP disk just the
complete idiot disk and we are almost on XP sp2 and "oem
slipstreaming " seams way to complicated. So why canâ?Tt
I copy the \I386 directory to the root dir in dos and
then do a in place reinstall from there or can I use
another copy of xphome to install from.? The Sony the
complete idiot disk would try to reformat my drive to A
20gb fat32 partition so I can not use It.
?
