Can I make a non-PC-specific boot disk?

[Guest]

I've learned a ton of things in the past week about coping with my e-Machine and the WIN XP OS. But the one thing I haven't figured out yet is, I have XP Restore CD's specific to my e-Machine PC and a friend has an XP OS problem with a different manufacturers PC. He can't get into his system to create Restore disks and his PC won't recognize a restore point prior to the onset of the problem.

Is it possible for me to create a WIN XP OS Restore disk that isn't e-Machine dedicated that he could use to rectify his difficulties? If so, can you advise me on any specifics on how to do so?

 

[Bob Harris]

If you had a real XP CDROM, that might be enought o run the recover console
on the other PC. Without that, you could try downloading the set of floppy
images form Microsoft that are intended to help install XP on a pC without a
CDROM drive. I have heard that the flopy set contains some repair-type
utilities.

If the PC has FAT32 drives, you could use a DOS floppy, such as is made via
the foramt command in win 98, ME, or even XP.

The best repair environment I have seen is called Barts PE Builder. That
requires a real XP CDROM, plus SP-1, and a CD-writier on a fully fucntioning
PC. If you follow the instructions carefully you will get a CDROM that can
boot the PC into a windows-like environment, from which you can fix thing,
including hard drives.

I've learned a ton of things in the past week about coping with my

e-Machine and the WIN XP OS. But the one thing I haven't figured out yet
is, I have XP Restore CD's specific to my e-Machine PC and a friend has an
XP OS problem with a different manufacturers PC. He can't get into his
system to create Restore disks and his PC won't recognize a restore point
prior to the onset of the problem.

Is it possible for me to create a WIN XP OS Restore disk that isn't

e-Machine dedicated that he could use to rectify his difficulties? If so,
can you advise me on any specifics on how to do so?