Creating an XP Boot CD

Post #294,877 by ChrisR 10/20/07 12:45:48 AM Reply	Creating an XP Boot CD A couple months, I created a bootable XP boot CD but I forgot how I did it. Need to try an recover my son's computer - it's cycling through the power up sequence. Running spinrite shows no sector errors. So now I need to see if the files are still intact. Anyone know how to go about creating an XP boot cd? Also, I recall that there was a program (Partition Magic I think) that allowed to for resizing partitions. His c: drive only has 15 gigs and was filled up (which probably what caused the grief). He has a partition for the d: drive that's 60 gigs that's mostly empty. Any recommendations for resizing partitions on XP?
Post #294,878 by Steve Lowe 10/20/07 12:57:51 AM Reply	Re: Creating an XP Boot CD I've used [link\|http://terabyte.vshost.com/bootitng.html\|Boot It NG] to successfully shrink NTFS partitions, but have never tried to grow one. As to making an XP boot cd, i'm clueless, but foudn [link\|http://old.bink.nu/xpbootcd/\|this page] with a bit of googling. Luck -- Steve [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu]
Post #294,967 by ChrisR 10/22/07 10:51:29 AM Reply	Hopelessly stuck. Got a bootable CD working. And the hard disk appears to be fine. Also downloaded some expireware from MS that I gather is intended for such things ([link\|http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5D600369-0554-4595-8AB4-C34B2860E087&displaylang=en\|Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset]. All diagnostics on the disk and OS show no problems. I was thinking that it might be that the MBR was hosed. Ran MbrFix but that didn't help. Then went ahead and ran BootItNG, which also runs fine. Next course of action is to find a copy of XP and reinstall the OS. Now if we can just locate the original upgrade CD's. Anyhow, thanks for the pointers.
Post #294,968 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/07 11:15:35 AM Reply	You don't need the original CDs . . . . . unless it's a big name brand (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. - see below) What you need is any XP CD of the same type (Home / Pro), preferably SP2 and the license number from the current install (is it on a sticker on the machine?). First try a repair install. Take "Install" not "R"=Repair at the first offer, then after the system finds the current install take "R" there. Unlike W98 you still need the proper license number. If that fails, do a full reinstall. If it is a big name brand than you need a CD from a more or less similar machine of the same brand. You don't need the license number because the number on the machine and the number registered in Windows are both phony - neither one will activate. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #294,969 by ChrisR 10/22/07 11:29:20 AM Reply	It's an older machine (Sony) That got upgraded to WinXP at some point. My son can't find the CD's that they used to upgrade it with. Seems like I've used a utility to retrieve the License number from the registry before. Will have to track it down. Though I don't know if it will work when the MS Diag tool is attached to the OS.
Post #294,970 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/07 11:54:44 AM 10/22/07 11:59:25 AM Reply	So you don't have the license number for the upgrade? The sticker didn't get put on the machine? If you can't boot the machine you've got a problem. Keyfinder by Magic Jellybean will recover the license numbers from a running system but I've never tried recovering it from an unbootable system. Hmmmm . . just looked and the current version of keyfinder - it has a "Load Hive" feature that may be able to get the information from another disk mounted to a bootable system. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx] Edited by Andrew Grygus Oct. 22, 2007, 11:59:25 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #294,879 by Another Scott 10/20/07 8:47:15 AM Reply	Look at Bootdisk.com [link\|http://www.bootdisk.com/\|http://www.bootdisk.com/] They have lots of boot images there. It looks like he may want payment before you can get access to the XP images, though. (He's got Linux and DOS images, too.) BootItNG does work well for changing partitions. In my experience, it's just as capable as Partition Magic. (I've only used it a few times.) Good luck. Cheers, Scott.

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