How to do it: 8 HP Rescue Disks to 1 HP Rescue Disk?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve Turner
  • Start date Start date
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Steve Turner

I have an HP Pavilion with a 2.2 Ghz Cerelon processor, 512 RAM and a 60GIG
HDD. It's running an OEM version of Windows XP Home SP2. When I have to take
drastic steps and restore to factory specs I have to plug in 8 rescue disks.
Can't do it unattended either. Is there some way I could take the 8 disks
and burn them to a DVD and do my restore that way? I'm not trying to pirate
the software. I just want to take what I own (and have a legal right to) and
create one DVD that I could do the restore from, unattended.

Thanks.
 
If I can assume you mean '3 1/2 inch floppies' there is a way to do it. I
also assume the first floppy is an MS-Dos boot disk. If all this is correct,
the procedure is not too hard.
Create a MS-Dos bootable DVD with the first disk files included. Create
seven files named 'disk2' (no extension) 'disk3' (and so on...) Put the
other seven file sets, and your seven new files on the DVD, and boot to it.

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Mark L. Ferguson
..
 
Mark. Thanks for the input but I think I may have been unclear. I would NOT
want to put a restore partition on floppies! It's ONLY 4.5 GIG large. I'd be
totally defeating the purpose and may be finished by the day I start
collecting my pension! I'm operating under Windows XP Home SP2. The restore
disks, which the machine prompted me to make when I FIRST booted it up when
I got it from the store, amount to 8 CDs, completely full. What I want to
do, if I can, is concatenate all 8 onto one DVD so that I can do a restore
simply by placing the one DVD into the drive and then walking away, so it's
totally unattended. The restore partition is a FAT disk some 5GIGs large.
Wow. I don't know HOW many 3 1/2ers it would take to store 4.5 GIG of FAT
HDD. Maybe they don't make that many any more. <grin>
 
Only HP would know how they wrote the .INI file used to progress through the
CD's. It's probably dependant on a Volume Label for each one. You might get
lucky and find a tech who would show you how to rewrite the INI file. My
approach would be a bit hacky. I would try to find something like
'sysprep.ini', and I would determine the volume labels needed, and change
those to the target disk (disk x) label.
You may own the XP install CD that you can use to expand the files in
"Deploy.CAB", which contains several help files (*.chm) for setup.
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Mark L. Ferguson
..
 
Steve said:
Mark. Thanks for the input but I think I may have been unclear. I would NOT
want to put a restore partition on floppies! It's ONLY 4.5 GIG large. I'd be
totally defeating the purpose and may be finished by the day I start
collecting my pension! I'm operating under Windows XP Home SP2. The restore
disks, which the machine prompted me to make when I FIRST booted it up when
I got it from the store, amount to 8 CDs, completely full. What I want to
do, if I can, is concatenate all 8 onto one DVD so that I can do a restore
simply by placing the one DVD into the drive and then walking away, so it's
totally unattended. The restore partition is a FAT disk some 5GIGs large.
Wow. I don't know HOW many 3 1/2ers it would take to store 4.5 GIG of FAT
HDD. Maybe they don't make that many any more. <grin>
Click to expand...
Have you already deleted HP's hidden partition? I was able to create one
restore DVD from HP's installed software and then delete the hidden
partition.

However, I've never had to use the restore DVD in 16 months. I wouldn't
see it as a major problem if I had to manually insert eight CD's one
after another for such an infrequent event. And I have now put so much
other software on my machine that I wouldn't want to use the restore DVD
at all. I back up with Acronis True Image to an external hard disk.

Bill
 
Bill Sharpe said:
Have you already deleted HP's hidden partition? I was able to create one
restore DVD from HP's installed software and then delete the hidden
partition.

However, I've never had to use the restore DVD in 16 months. I wouldn't
see it as a major problem if I had to manually insert eight CD's one after
another for such an infrequent event. And I have now put so much other
software on my machine that I wouldn't want to use the restore DVD at all.
I back up with Acronis True Image to an external hard disk.

Bill
Click to expand...

I'm maybe every six months. How did you do the restore DVD? I have the
hidden partition. Actually it's only partially hidden. It shows up as a D
drive, FAT disk. It doesn't give me all the data that's on it. I'm leery
about touching it. But if you can set me onto a site that will explain how I
can do what you did, I'm be really appreciative!
 
I'm maybe every six months. How did you do the restore DVD? I have the
hidden partition. Actually it's only partially hidden. It shows up as a D
drive, FAT disk. It doesn't give me all the data that's on it. I'm leery
about touching it. But if you can set me onto a site that will explain how I
can do what you did, I'm be really appreciative!
 
Steve said:
I'm maybe every six months. How did you do the restore DVD? I have the
hidden partition. Actually it's only partially hidden. It shows up as a D
drive, FAT disk. It doesn't give me all the data that's on it. I'm leery
about touching it. But if you can set me onto a site that will explain how I
can do what you did, I'm be really appreciative!
Click to expand...
Page 4 of the PC Troubleshooting Guide that came with my Pavillion tells
me how to create recovery disc media, either CD's or DVD's. There's a
gotcha there, because according to HP you can create only one set of
recovery discs.

But page 5 explains how to run system recovery from the hard disk drive
if you still have access to your recovery partition. If you don't have
this 20-page printed guide you might ask HP whether it's available
online or whether they can send you a copy of it.

And I misspoke. I've owned this HP for 28 months and haven't used the
recovery DVD yet and now don't ever expect to. I have upgraded from XP
Home to XP Pro, removed the hidden partition, and deleted practically
all of the bundled software that came with the original PC.

Hope this helps.

Bill
 
Page 4 of the PC Troubleshooting Guide that came with my Pavillion tells
me how to create recovery disc media, either CD's or DVD's. There's a
gotcha there, because according to HP you can create only one set of
recovery discs.

But page 5 explains how to run system recovery from the hard disk drive if
you still have access to your recovery partition. If you don't have this
20-page printed guide you might ask HP whether it's available online or
whether they can send you a copy of it.

And I misspoke. I've owned this HP for 28 months and haven't used the
recovery DVD yet and now don't ever expect to. I have upgraded from XP
Home to XP Pro, removed the hidden partition, and deleted practically all
of the bundled software that came with the original PC.

Hope this helps.

Bill
Click to expand...

I'll look at Page 5, thanks! I have a DVD-RAM drive. Unfortunately it
doesn't appear that the DVD-ROM/CDRW that came with my Pavilion is capable
of reading discs burned in the RAM drive. Least ways I haven't been able to
get it to work.

I HAVE done the odd restore from the hidden partition but once you do that
you have to reinstall all of the software and uninstall all of the
promotional stuff that gets reinstalled when you do the store.

I tried to install Win XP Pro but it didn't recognize half of the hardware
for some reason. I was always under the impression that the hardware in
these machines have a code hardwired into them that matches up the (hidden)
Serial Number of the OEM operating system.

Can you look at your 20 page printed guide and tell me if there's a part
number so I can reference it to HP when I get in touch with them? I'm not
holding my breath. This machine was bought back in 2003!

And, Bill, you continue to be MOST helpful!
 
Steve said:
I'll look at Page 5, thanks! I have a DVD-RAM drive. Unfortunately it
doesn't appear that the DVD-ROM/CDRW that came with my Pavilion is capable
of reading discs burned in the RAM drive. Least ways I haven't been able to
get it to work.

I HAVE done the odd restore from the hidden partition but once you do that
you have to reinstall all of the software and uninstall all of the
promotional stuff that gets reinstalled when you do the store.

I tried to install Win XP Pro but it didn't recognize half of the hardware
for some reason. I was always under the impression that the hardware in
these machines have a code hardwired into them that matches up the (hidden)
Serial Number of the OEM operating system.

Can you look at your 20 page printed guide and tell me if there's a part
number so I can reference it to HP when I get in touch with them? I'm not
holding my breath. This machine was bought back in 2003!

And, Bill, you continue to be MOST helpful!
Click to expand...
My printed manual is titled "PC Troubleshooting Guide" and is identified
as 5991-3284.
I went to HP's support site at http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome.
I selected United States, then entered my Pavilion model number A1100Y.
On the next screen I clicked "Manuals" on the right side.
First choice was "PC Trouble Shooting/System Restore"
However, all I got was a much briefer two-sheet manual -- the second
page was in Japanese -- identified as 5991-3384. There may be some
information that will help you there, but obviously it's not nearly as
useful as the full document I have. I tried HP's search engine but could
not locate either manual by entering the manual part numbers.
You, of course, have a different model number as your machine is two or
three years older than mine.
A little Google searching on "PC Troubleshooting Guide" brought up this
26-page guide for the a1200 series(although when I used a1100y for my
model, the list of guides was much, much shorter):
http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00494420/c00494420.pdf
It appears to be very similar to the printed one I have, although the ID
on the very last page is different. Page numbers go from 1 to 20 on
this; 1 to 17 on my manual.
Be careful with the link. It may wrap in my message, but the address
needs to be entered all in one line.
If you still have HP's customized Help and Support installed you may be
able to find some information there.
My Win XP Pro was a clean install. I had backed up all my data and, of
course, had to reinstall all my programs.
And, oh yes, if you ever decide to get rid of the hidden partition be
very careful. That's what led to my XP Pro clean install... I'm quite
happy with the result, but it was a real struggle to get there.

Bill
 
Bill Sharpe said:
My printed manual is titled "PC Troubleshooting Guide" and is identified
as 5991-3284.
I went to HP's support site at
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome.
I selected United States, then entered my Pavilion model number A1100Y.
On the next screen I clicked "Manuals" on the right side.
First choice was "PC Trouble Shooting/System Restore"
However, all I got was a much briefer two-sheet manual -- the second page
was in Japanese -- identified as 5991-3384. There may be some information
that will help you there, but obviously it's not nearly as useful as the
full document I have. I tried HP's search engine but could not locate
either manual by entering the manual part numbers.
You, of course, have a different model number as your machine is two or
three years older than mine.
A little Google searching on "PC Troubleshooting Guide" brought up this
26-page guide for the a1200 series(although when I used a1100y for my
model, the list of guides was much, much shorter):
http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00494420/c00494420.pdf
It appears to be very similar to the printed one I have, although the ID
on the very last page is different. Page numbers go from 1 to 20 on this;
1 to 17 on my manual.
Be careful with the link. It may wrap in my message, but the address needs
to be entered all in one line.
If you still have HP's customized Help and Support installed you may be
able to find some information there.
My Win XP Pro was a clean install. I had backed up all my data and, of
course, had to reinstall all my programs.
And, oh yes, if you ever decide to get rid of the hidden partition be very
careful. That's what led to my XP Pro clean install... I'm quite happy
with the result, but it was a real struggle to get there.

Bill
Click to expand...

The link worked fine! Thanks again. I tried buggering around with the
partition and installed XP Pro but the display was crap. A lot of necessary
drivers were not installed, not the least of which, obviously, was the
graphics card driver and the monitor driver. Try as I might I couldn't
change the resolution. There was at least one item that wouldn't run because
my resolution was so low. So, once again, I reverted to the factory
installs, did an update to SP2, and then let Windows download the updates (I
can't wait til SP3 comes out! I will be one of the first to download it!).
I'll have to read over the manual you directed me to. And, once again, Bill,
I'm in your debt.

Yesterday was taken up with eradicating the virtumonde virus. Took all day.
I believe it came in with a surf session using IExplorer 7 (updated).
Apparently that virus first introduces itself through an activeX control
that you agree to in IExplorer.
 
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