Restore Dsks has no Repair Options

[Guest]

I am curious and am looking for a method -

Have a laptop, have restore disks, have a win product key for the laptop
installation. Got the i386 folder on laptop, but it seems useless since
there is no win "setup.exe" application

What I cannot do is to "repair" windows with the restore disks; as they can
onlyl reinstall original configuration thus all other programs installed will
require re-installations. And lets omit the restore feature

One option would be to repair windows with the windows cd belonging to my
desktop. But this requires to use the desktop product key for the laptop.

Are there any other options/methods?

 

[Jerry]

OEM restore disks can only to a restore install (or, as you've noticed - a
return to the original configuration). To do a repair install you need the
CD from a retail version of XP. (The restore CDs is how vendor's screw
users - they don't have to provide a full, retail version of XP.)

You cannot use the CD from the desktop. The XP license states only one
install per system and the desktop's CD has already been used.

 

[Guest]

If there is a "winnt.exe" in the I386 folder, this will run the setup from
DOS.

 

[Guest]

Yeh, to my surprise i found the file. But it told me to use winnt32.exe
instead. I ran it, but only had the new installaton (advanced) option. So i
ok'd it and got to the product key entry screen. It's interesting to know
that the file is on my laptop, but i really don't know if it's beneficial. I
suppose if the restore disks were lost, then i could restore a new copy of
windows - not too different that the predicament of using the restore disks.
In that, both methods cannot "repair" windows.. Do you have any other
thoughts?

 

[BurrWalnut]

I haven’t tried it but have a look here
http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm