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| Thread ID: 91399 | 2008-07-05 22:58:00 | Now ... Here's A Silly Question! | DUNK (1527) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 685619 | 2008-07-05 22:58:00 | I have an XP system, with no XP Disk. If I locate & copy my 1386 file to a folder. All 881 Mb's of it. Can I burn it to CD & use it to re-install Windows, if my present installation should ever turn to custard? Using something such as 'Image Burn'? Been thinking about this for a while now. Finally got it into words! It's a 'Dell' system with an XP sticker on it, if that helps. So ... Is my idea a go. Or, a no go ?? :o Regards to all. Dunk. |
DUNK (1527) | ||
| 685620 | 2008-07-05 23:10:00 | its not a silly question, because yes you can - Kind of. you cant install it from fresh, as it still requires other files that windows uses, BUT you can do a repair install from it as long as the i386 folder/contents are not damaged, so making a back up to CD while its working is not a silly idea-- Heres How: Reboot the PC in Safe Mode with command Prompt ,You should then have something like C: documents and settings\your name\ Type in CD C:\I386 <Enter> Type in winnt32.exe <Enter> Agree to anything, this should then reinstall windows as doing a repair install. When asked, enter the product key that’s on the Case or on the box the CD Case / Packet the XP CD came in, it will reboot several times this is normal, it will take approximately an hour. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 685621 | 2008-07-05 23:37:00 | Just adding to above, the actual size of the i386 folder on a XP CD is 496Mb, so if your one on the PC is 881 Mb's - thats would require a DVD to save a copy. | wainuitech (129) | ||
| 685622 | 2008-07-06 00:00:00 | Or find a freind who has an XP disk the same as yours ie home if thats what you have and copy it to cd you don't need their product key as you would use yours if you had to reinstall it | gary67 (56) | ||
| 685623 | 2008-07-06 00:31:00 | possibly smarter to burn an image of the entire system as it is now then all you'd need to do in the event of a meltdown would be to stuff in a new drive and re-write the image onto it....... | drcspy (146) | ||
| 685624 | 2008-07-06 00:41:00 | Would not an entire image be possibly greater than 4.7 GB, the size of a DVD disc. | Slim (4633) | ||
| 685625 | 2008-07-06 00:48:00 | Would not an entire image be possibly greater than 4.7 GB, the size of a DVD disc. More than likely would be bigger than 4.7 Gb - but an image can be saved to a removable HD attached Via USB. | wainuitech (129) | ||
| 685626 | 2008-07-06 00:55:00 | yeh and it can also be automatically (by most if not all imaging programs) 'spanned' over several disks if need be ......very simple | drcspy (146) | ||
| 685627 | 2008-07-06 00:57:00 | also most if not all imaging progs will compress the image file so that for example with norton ghost you can usually compress your image to about half the size of the 'original' thus if you have say 25gb you could compress it to about 12-13gb (high compression) and that'd fit on about three dvds.....in some ways its better to save an image to a optical disk (dvd etc) because they are NOT machines (harddrives are) and they dont 'generally' deteriorate if looked after....... | drcspy (146) | ||
| 685628 | 2008-07-06 01:50:00 | Being a Dell, are you sure you dont have a Recovery partition? | feersumendjinn (64) | ||
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