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Windows
Recovery or Restore Disks: Problems and
Alternatives
By Vic Laurie, Princeton PCUG, New Jersey
victor@vlaur.com
Once upon a time you received a copy of a
full Windows
installation disk when you bought a computer. This allowed you to
reinstall
individual system files or Windows components if anything went wrong.
But no
longer. These days the best you can hope for from many vendors is a
so-called
“recovery” or “restore” disk”. And many major vendors do not even
provide that
much. Instead they put stuff on a hidden partition on the hard drive.
This is
all the backup that you get, and if the hard drive crashes, the hidden
partition goes too. Then you have no way of reinstalling Windows on a
replacement hard drive without getting a disk from the original PC
vendor. From
what I read on the Web, this last process can take some time and
effort, if you
succeed at all. If you are out of the warrantee period, you may be
completely
out of luck.
Some vendors may provide a Windows disk when
you buy a PC if
they are prodded hard enough. However, there may be some kind of
“handling and
shipping” fee. Note that, if you do finally get a disk, it will
probably be an
OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version and may lack some
features of a
full-fledged version. Also OEM versions of Windows are often not
eligible for
upgrades.
The failure to provide an actual Windows
installation disk
with new computers is convenient for Microsoft and the computer vendors
but can
be a real problem for the PC user. There are many problems that can be
fixed by
copying a single system file or reinstalling small portions of the
Windows
operating system. Without an installation disk, PC users need to have
some
other source for these files. If you put a recovery disk into your CD
drive, it
will want to reformat your hard drive and reinstall an image of your
computer
that is a replica of the way your system was on the day you bought it.
Any
changes that you have made will be wiped out. All those programs you
installed,
all those Microsoft patches, XP SP2, all of it will be gone. The same
thing
applies when you restore from one of those hidden partitions.
Therefore, an alternative is needed. At the
very least, a
source of files for adding and removing Windows components and
restoring
corrupted files should be available. Sometimes the vendor will have put
the
Windows installation files in the root of your hard drive or in the
Windows
folder. In Windows XP look for a folder named “I386” (without the
quotes). If
you do have one of these folders, burn a copy to a CD for backup. This
CD will
not have all the functions of an installation CD since it will not
auto-run nor
will it boot. However, reinstallation can be initiated by clicking the
file
Winnt32.exe (assuming that you can get your system to boot). If you
have a
FAT32 disk and can use DOS, Winnt.exe is the appropriate file to access
from a
DOS boot disk.
A problem is that you will have a disk that
lacks any of the
multitudes of patches and updates that will have come out since you
bought your
computer. Therefore, you need to "slipstream" with the XP SP2 update.
Slipstreaming is a way of merging updates with the original files so
that
everything is updated. This is not a quick job but it is worth doing.
An
excellent detailed step-by-step procedure is given at the Elder Geek
site. If
you can borrow a Windows XP installation disk (almost any version will
do) you
can extract the image that is needed to make the CD bootable and add
that to
the disk. Details for using common CD burning software to do all this
is given
at the reference cited above.
One more problem can be getting the Windows
XP product key
for your system. It may be pasted or written somewhere in the
documentation
that came with your computer. Be sure to make a permanent record of it.
If you
cannot find the product key, there are several free applications that
will
retrieve it from your system. One is ViewKeyXp and is available here.
Another
is Keyfinder, which is available here. Also, system information
applications
like Belarc Adviser can reveal the key.
At the end, you will still have something
that provides
backup only for the Windows operating system. Since I want to be able
to
restore everything, including software that I have installed, I prefer
to spend
a few dollars and use disk imaging software. It makes keeping
up-to-date
backups on CDs or other external media very easy. Norton Ghost, BootIt
Next
Generation or Acronis True Image are all reasonable choices.
There is no restriction against any
non-profit group using
this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given
the
author. The Editorial Committee of the
Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international
organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to
you.
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