Creating a Windows XP recovery image

I am looking to implement a recovery option similar to what you find on HP and IBM pc where they system will prompt you at boot up to "Press F11" or what ever to recover your operating system. The primary reason this would be nice is that most of the computers I work on are used by the less than computer literate people and this method is fairly pain free. But unfortunatley I have no idea how to do this. Can someone point me in the right direction or give me a run down on how it can be done.

 

I did the same on a previous computer running win98, it worked fine. Using config.sys and autoexec.bat I created a boot menu with lot of options including restoration, registry repair, scandisk, boot with cdrom drive, and so on. On XP machines these files are in the system32 folder and renamed as config.nt and autoexec.nt.. No need to append special keystrokes, you just scroll down in sub menus and choose how to boot in, with default option activated if you want some. Have a look in config.nt with a text editor to see by yourself and google to retrieve more infos...

 

Thanks for the reply. Not sure if that's exactly what I want to do. I need this done some Mr. PC User can go "Oh no I got a virus" reboot his PC press a key then *BANG* system is back to factory defaults, well more like *baaaaaaaang* as the image or what ever is copied back over, no need to enter keys or go looking for CD's, and it can't slow the boot of the PC by much either.

 

a kind of recovery console which would be run from the hd instead of a cd ? Assuming Mr PC USer has administrator rights to do so, he would lose his data restoring the computer to default settings..

 

Yeah that's sort of the idea. I first seen this on HP and IBM pc where there was no recovery CD but you could press F11 during boot up and the PC would have its default image loaded. It would just make for an easier fix than having to go there and fix it myself as most of them are comfortable using the CD.