Recovering windows.old

Have a Vista Ultimate install that worked flawlessly for years. Have the original disk but repair did not work and the restore function tells me that my prior restores do not exist. Have a Tried to copy the first windows,old with a DOS copy command from a boot.img CD to a USB external CD drive. Not sure why all three were attempted but the collective size exceeded the CD

windows.old, windows.old.001, windows.old.002 came from two aborted efforts to reinstall

I found a PowerQuest Drive Image7 for XP/2000. Is there anything on this can could assist in getting windows.old to a CD drive? Guidance sought