How to create some sort of 'reinstallation' discs for XP Professional?

I’m not knowledgeable so please excuse if I don’t use correct terminology here.

We have a couple of Sony laptops, and more or less the first thing that the setup process did was to ask me to create ‘reinstallation’ (terminology) discs to use if needed.
I did use one of these after my son had a Ramnit virus issue.

My query here relates to a couple of older machines – two Compaq Evo N620C laptops, running XP Professional with service pack 2.
The machines are ex-company laptops which were rebuilt by the techies using the enterprise installation operating system so I don't have any discs.
I had a boot problem with one of them, which I managed to fix with chkdsk /r after creating a boot CD with recovery console on it, but it got me thinking about what I would do if I wanted or needed to do a reinstall.
So, how would I create some ‘re-installation’ discs?
Any other advice about good practice would also be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

I think what you're looking to do is create a "slipstream" disc, where you create a custom reinstallation with service packs, etc... already included. I did this several years ago for similar reasons as yourself. I think you're looking for nLite. Worked beautifully for me for Home and Professional versions. Here is a tutorial with download links:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/arc...installation_disc_with_sp3_tweaks_patches.cfm

 

Thanks very much for the response.
Had a quick look and the first part of the process asks ‘to insert your XP disc into a drive’.
I don’t have any XP discs (and the techies disabled windows update as they said that Microsoft would probably be unhappy for me to be using enterprise software for home use, hence just at SP2).
I think I’m looking to have some way of reinstalling what I have now if I get a serious virus or some other problem which means the machine won’t work properly.
Cheers

 

You could probably use the reinstallation disc created with your son's Sony laptop. Conversely, WinXP discs are pretty prevalent; can you borrow one from a friend to use as a template, or perhaps buy one on E-bay? They're pretty cheap now, LOL!

Alternatively, maybe you just want to "image" your existing drive for reinstallation in the event of a catastrophe? There are numerous options for this, such as Easeus, Norton Ghost, Clonezilla, etc... I have only used Clonezilla to create a backup/restore image, but I've never actually had to restore it. With Clonezilla, your image will be specific to the device/machine you have imaged, with drivers, etc... for that machine. This is wonderful to restore to the same device, as everything is already included; whereas the slipstream disc is more generic and applicable to any machine, but requires any device drivers for that specific machine to be installed. If this helps, here's a Clonezilla link:

http://www.howtoforge.com/back-up-restore-hard-drives-and-partitions-with-clonezilla-live

 

I’m going to follow your advice to use Clonezilla to make an image of each machine, and hope I do it well enough to be able to use it if need be!
Thanks again.

 

Well, Clonezilla complained that the disk was damaged and wouldn’t make an image.
Tried Macrium Reflect, which never progressed beyond an ‘analysing disk’ message – tried three times and left it overnight but no progress at all.
I ran chkdsk /r a couple of times, which wasn’t fixing any errors, but clearly there’s a problem with it.
Are there any disk image programs which could cope with a dodgy hard drive?
Or will it just have to take its chances?

 

Try Easeus. Be careful, as ever, to select the correct source and target (destination) disks.
I've tried this XP and on my desktop it wouldn't boot (XP Home) through USB, you might need to swap the disks to get the clone to boot if the cloning process is successful. I use an old version of Easeus that's the cloning program only

Dumb_Question
22.August.2014
Windows XP / SP3
Motherboard MS-6577 v2.1 with Celeron 2.5GHz / 1GB RAM (I think)

 

I'd have to agree with DQ's advice. I've never had your issue (as far as I know), so I've got nothing new to provide. I've heard great things about Easeus, but never tried it, as Clonezilla has done the job for me. I'd say give Easeus a shot too!

The only other tool I have experience with is Disk Druid, which is a command line utility typically available on all Linux LiveCDs. The only potential problem with Disk Druid (referred to hereafter as 'dd') is that it literally copies your drive, errors and all. Bad geometry? Copied! Bad sectors? Copied! Etc... Maybe Clonezilla, Norton & Easeus do this also? Not sure... But learning your disc has issues changes the game a little, IMO.

If Easeus doesn't succeed, we can try dd. Very much like Clonezilla, you burn the disc medium, boot from disc into a live environment, and locate the "terminal" program in the Live environment. From the terminal we can list your hardware and identify your drive names. Most modern computer drives will be identified as 'sda' (system drive a), while older machines may be identified as 'hda' (hard drive a). External USB drives are typically 'sdb', 'sdc', etc...

With your image source (input field) and image destination (output field) identified, you simply type in the terminal 'dd path/to/input path/to/output. For instance, probably:

Code:

dd dev/sda dev/sdb

Sit back, watch, or find something else productive to do. Depending on how much data, drive size, etc... it could take awhile.

 

Going on holiday for a couple of weeks from this weekend but will follow your advice about Easeus when I get back.
Thanks both for your time.

 

I have not used anything but Easeus that I can remember, but others are recommended by other MGs more knowledgeable and experienced than me, for example Macrium Reflect (which I think you tried) and Acronis (true I image). I stress again that I use an old version of Easeus that I made a bootable CD of which will only clone whole disks or partitions. I have only cloned whole disks.

I understood that Easeus made a sector by sector, if not a byte by byte, copy of the source disk. I don't know what it does when it encounters bad or unreadable sectors, though I might unknowingly have had some (but I think not ?)

Certainly it copies from a disk to a disk of a different size (it creates the spare as an unallocated partition [target larger than source] or copies the first sectors of the source until the target is full [target smaller than source]) or copies to a disk with a different 'geometry'. In the case a different geometry I am not sure about booting from the target afterwards, though it says copy successfully made. The version of Easeus I have warns you if disks are of different geometries, and gives you the option to abort at that point if you wish.

That's about the limit of my experience I'm afraid.

Dumb_Questipn
22.August.2014

 

It sounds like what you want to do is create a disk image of your data so that you can restore your system in the event of some catastrophic event. To accomplish this you don't need to clone the entire drive, just the portion that has data on it (boot files, system partition, OS partition, data partitions). Cloning a drive typically involves copying the entire disk, including free space, although some programs allow one to "clone" partitions which muddies the waters in terms of what "cloning" actually means. Furthermore, some programs allow the user to create partition backups that include the copying of empty sectors, thus leaving one to scratch their head in regard to the difference between cloning and full partition backup.

In any case, if you've run chkdsk and fixed all the errors on your drive then any bad sectors will now be marked by Windows as bad sectors, and therefore shouldn't get copied when you backup or clone a disk/partition.

There are a number of good programs that allow one to create disk images for backup purposes. The EaseUS program that has been referred to in this thread is the EaseUS Disk Copy program which does sector by sector disk cloning. I believe that the program you want is EaseUS ToDo Backup Free Edition which allows one to copy disk data to an image file without copying the free space. I use a couple of programs to create disk images (because I'm paranoid and do redundant backups). One program is Acronis True Image which has been mentioned in this thread. Although an excellent program, it is not freeware. The other app that I use, which is freeware, is AOMEI Backupper Standard. You want to do a "Disk Backup" without empty sectors. I've used both programs to completely restore my system when things have gone awry, including malware infection and failure to boot.