hi:)

does anybody know how to create a rescue disk for windows xp home edition? my laptop doesnt have a floppy drive and from what i can tell you cannot create a rescue disk onto a CDR!! I dont want to create one in the partitioned harddrive but have one toatly seperate from the machine.

Any help would br graetly appreciated

cheers

kit:)

Pretty sure you can use the original installation CD to access the recovery console (well, I've done it before)...

Rob.

Pretty sure you can use the original installation CD to access the recovery console (well' date=' I've done it before)...

Rob.[/quote']

Yep you can

boot from the original xp cd, get through the nag screens and you will get 3 options, just select "R" to repair an exisiting install with the recovery console.

the fun bit is a "feature" of the recovery console, it needs the "original" admin password from when the machine was installed to run the recovery console. You can bypass this feature by modifying the security settings in the local policy (doddle to do btw)

Fluff'

but doesnt that just work if you want to boot up with minimal settings and none of your original files.I'm really wanting to keep my files,settings and preferences for further use as i use the machine for my work.

cheers

kit

but doesnt that just work if you want to boot up with minimal settings and none of your original files.I'm really wanting to keep my files,settings and preferences for further use as i use the machine for my work.

You'd be best off doing a proper back up using Ghost or something - recovery disks are only really suitable for fixing an installation which has become corrupted for one reason or another...

Rob.

have tried using ghost but it wont back up to a CDR only to a floppy and my machine doesnt have one!! so im a wee bit stumped at the moment!!!

k

You could buy a floppy drive (circa £7 ata pc fair) and mount it in an external case, and plug it into a USB port. Then adjust the boot options in the bios so it sees the USB first

would it work if i used a an external flash drive? or would it be too small to hold all the files?

k:)

Yeah id second that about ghost. Get the Norton Ghost, its free. Just do that every few months. It should write to a dvd, or another/external harddisk.

have just tried with ghost again using a flash drive and it wont work!!:( it will only back up to my partitioned drive or a floppy!!!

if your machine doesnt come with a floppy then there must be a way to do it?? i would have thought but then again we are talking about micrsoft!!!

k:)

have just tried with ghost again using a flash drive and it wont work!!:( it will only back up to my partitioned drive or a floppy!!!

if your machine doesnt come with a floppy then there must be a way to do it?? i would have thought but then again we are talking about micrsoft!!!

k:)

I know the Symantec Ghost (business version) can use USB stuff, I'm not sure about the Norton Ghost (home use).

Can you boot into Ghost and then quit, and access the console/dos prompt? If you can, can you type in ghost again to run it? If you can, see what flags you can give it. The symantec one is ghost -forceusb, norton might be the same.

Do you have access to a usb hard drive or cdrom drive? We usually use it with the cdrom drive for the ghost program and then stick a usb hard drive in for the image. Course, we dont use floppy drives anymore, so cant boot from the floppy. Can you? In which case ghost can run on the floppy, and you can backup to the cd drive.

Paul