gsquared said:
I bought a pre-packed computer with Windows XP preloaded and no CDs, now my
system is starting to get hinky and I want to create a boot CD. Are these
available anywhere? I looked around online and it seems I can make one if I
have a C:1836 folder, but I do not. ANy ideas?
I see a link here, to order recovery media. Presumably this would be
the same kind of content, as is contained in the recovery partition
on the hard drive. At some point, you'll be prompted to enter the
serial number of the computer. Apparently, HP carries replacement
media sets, for the warranty period, and removes it afterwards. So
it may or may not be available as an offer, indefinitely.
"XP Home SP2 52NAheRED3/4 + Supp 1 Recovery Kit"
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=457547#
The second link in that section, talks about burning your own recovery
media. You get one shot to do it right. If a computer is used, a
previous owner of the computer may have burned (and lost) the
only copy of media this software will prepare for you. In which case
you'd use the previous link, to try to order a set. Make absolutely
certain your burner is working (do a test burn first, and verify the
burn etc). If the burner is flaky, resolve that issue first.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...7939&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=457547&os=228
The third option, is to find a seller on the web, selling recovery
media. I have no idea whether those kinds of offers work for
people, and aren't a ripoff etc. This is the first one I got in
a search for "SR1410NX recovery". They want a total of $31 in
this particular case.
http://www.computersurgeons.com/shoppingcart/s.htm
A fourth option is too complicated. If you downloaded a Knoppix
LiveCD from Knopper.net, you could use the "dd" disk dump command
in Linux, to do a sector by sector copy of your old hard drive,
to a brand new hard drive. But this would not be the easiest procedure
to follow, and if there are bad sectors on the old hard drive,
I cannot guarantee you'd get an exact copy. I used that technique the
last time I needed to clone a disk. I'm booted from the clone right
now. The syntax looks like this, and is run in a terminal (command)
type window.
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hda2
The copy rate averaged about 13MB/sec for me. I scanned the source
hard drive, ahead of time, for bad sectors, so I knew there were
good odds the copy would work.
When you buy a new hard drive, some manufacturers have software
on their site, to copy the disk. The only problem with that option,
is the copy may be at the file level, rather than just copying
every sector. The sector copy concept is a bit easier on the drive,
since the head on the disk doesn't have to fly around a lot during
the copy.
Finally, if all of this is too complicated, perhaps a local shop can
follow up on one of the options, and install a new hard drive for you.
Note - this may seem counterintuitive, but if you have backup software
and a means at hand, backup your important data before doing anything
else. For example, if you have a large email database on the drive,
copy that over to something, for safe keeping. There have been cases,
where a shop gets the customer's instructions wrong, and just
"reformats C:", wiping out all the customer's data files. So there
is an associated risk with the local shop option, and a backup
of important data is how you survive whatever happens.
HTH,
Paul
