Win XP on Harddrive burning to image

[Focs]

I have recently bought a Dell computer with Windows XP MCE installed on it. I did not get a CD with the original Win XP. If i want to reinstall windows, i have to do a system restore to get the clean Dell installation again. Is it possible to burn that Windows XP to a DVD so that i can format my complete harddrive to make a clean install from the DVD???

René

 

[linney]

Any half decent imaging software should do that for you. A link to check out is

Drive Image Software for Windows

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html

Freeware cloning tools: (unchecked links)

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/index.htm

http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

In your case it sounds like you may also have a hidden Recovery Partition which may contain important information for the well being of the operating system. You may have to look into that a bit further?

Miss Your OS CDs? Me, Too!

http://langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-01-15.htm#4

Creating a Windows CD from a Recovery Disk

http://langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-11-19.htm#2

Wiping Out Special "Recovery" Partitions

http://langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-02-06.htm#1

 

[Focs]

Thanks, i'll look into it.

René

 

[bcastner]

You cannot do a "clean install" by making an image of your existing installation. All you can do is to make essentially an updated version of your existing recovery CD, and restore XP MCE to whatever state it was in when you made the system state snapshot.

Call Dell Tech Support and request an XP MCE CD, not a recovery CD. I believe there is a small charge of US $15 or something similar.