Windows Vista recovery disk making question.

[kraut]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I am desperate.

The wife has a box with 64bit Vista and someone ran a registery
cleaner on it and cleaned the registery so clean that the system would
not start windows. It went through the screen that gave the choices
for set-up, recovery, etc then the safe, normal, etc start screen and
regardless of what chose it would go dark and windows would never
start but the activity light would keep flickering showing it was
trying to do something. I took it in and repair used the recovery
disk to set it back to factory setup!! :-(

Question is: Is it possible to make a to make a recovery disk (as the
factory labeled it) of the way I get it set that would be like the
factory recovery disk which has a rcd.dat file and an image directory
on disk 1 and a rcd2.dat file and an image directory on disk 2 so if
the thing crashed again at the startup options screen that has the
recovery option I could just use my home made recovery disk instead of
the factory ones??

I know I can make a backup but if the system will not get past the
screen with the recovery option what good are they. Will accept any
comments on backups as long as I can also get an answer to the
original recovery disk question also.

I would appreciate any help or directions on how to do this if it is
possible. Would be nice if I could do this on wife Vista box AND my
XP box.

Thanks so much for the time and possible help.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I am desperate.

The wife has a box with 64bit Vista and someone ran a registery
cleaner on it and cleaned the registery so clean that the system would
not start windows. It went through the screen that gave the choices
for set-up, recovery, etc then the safe, normal, etc start screen and
regardless of what chose it would go dark and windows would never
start but the activity light would keep flickering showing it was
trying to do something. I took it in and repair used the recovery
disk to set it back to factory setup!! :-(

Question is: Is it possible to make a to make a recovery disk (as the
factory labeled it) of the way I get it set that would be like the
factory recovery disk which has a rcd.dat file and an image directory
on disk 1 and a rcd2.dat file and an image directory on disk 2 so if
the thing crashed again at the startup options screen that has the
recovery option I could just use my home made recovery disk instead of
the factory ones??

I know I can make a backup but if the system will not get past the
screen with the recovery option what good are they. Will accept any
comments on backups as long as I can also get an answer to the
original recovery disk question also.

I would appreciate any help or directions on how to do this if it is
possible. Would be nice if I could do this on wife Vista box AND my
XP box.

Thanks so much for the time and possible help.

Most respectable backup programs enable you to make a bootable CD (or
DVD) of the backup software. If your system becomes unbootable, you
would boot from that CD and restore the hard drive from the backup.

Three examples known to me are Macrium, Acronis, and Casper. Another,
EASEUS Disk Copy, is free and is always used - for backup and restore
both - from a bootable CD.

Here's a caveat about Casper. I have three licenses; its CD will boot
only on two of the computers, not the third, and their support
essentially refused to help me with that problem.

All four of the programs I mentioned make a complete image or clone of
the original disk, and should be able to completely restore the system
to the last backup.

 

[Mark Adams]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I am desperate.

The wife has a box with 64bit Vista and someone ran a registery
cleaner on it and cleaned the registery so clean that the system would
not start windows. It went through the screen that gave the choices
for set-up, recovery, etc then the safe, normal, etc start screen and
regardless of what chose it would go dark and windows would never
start but the activity light would keep flickering showing it was
trying to do something. I took it in and repair used the recovery
disk to set it back to factory setup!! :-(

Question is: Is it possible to make a to make a recovery disk (as the
factory labeled it) of the way I get it set that would be like the
factory recovery disk which has a rcd.dat file and an image directory
on disk 1 and a rcd2.dat file and an image directory on disk 2 so if
the thing crashed again at the startup options screen that has the
recovery option I could just use my home made recovery disk instead of
the factory ones??

I know I can make a backup but if the system will not get past the
screen with the recovery option what good are they. Will accept any
comments on backups as long as I can also get an answer to the
original recovery disk question also.

I would appreciate any help or directions on how to do this if it is
possible. Would be nice if I could do this on wife Vista box AND my
XP box.

Thanks so much for the time and possible help.

Yes, you can do this. All you need is a disk imaging program like Acronis
True Image, or Norton Ghost, and a USB hard drive. There are others, as well
as freeware programs (Google for others).

I use Acronis and have never had any trouble with it. Set your computer BIOS
to boot from CD, attach the USB hard drive, place the Acronis disk in the
drive and reboot the machine. The machine boots to the Acronis disk, and
follow the instructions to make an image of the hard drive to the USB drive.
The program makes a compressed image of everything on your drive and is
stored as one big file on the USB drive. You can image as many computers as
you want and save them all as separate files to the USB drive, as long as
there is space for them all.

To restore an image, reverse the process. Boot from the Acronis disk and use
the program to restore an image of that machine from the USB drive back to
that machine. No reinstalling Windows, drivers, applications, and data; the
whole kit-and-kaboodle is all done at once. The program can make incremental
backups as well.

You can also install the Acronis program to your computer, and leave the
external drive connected all the time. The program can be set up to make
backups automatically while Windows is running, like in the middle of the
night when you're asleep.

If your hard drive fails, or some moron runs a registry cleaner ;-) and your
machine won't boot; simply restore from your last backup.

By the way, get rid of the registry cleaner. None of them do any good to
improve performance, and sometimes they do a lot of harm as you found out!

 

[Mark Adams]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I am desperate.

The wife has a box with 64bit Vista and someone ran a registery
cleaner on it and cleaned the registery so clean that the system would
not start windows. It went through the screen that gave the choices
for set-up, recovery, etc then the safe, normal, etc start screen and
regardless of what chose it would go dark and windows would never
start but the activity light would keep flickering showing it was
trying to do something. I took it in and repair used the recovery
disk to set it back to factory setup!! :-(

Question is: Is it possible to make a to make a recovery disk (as the
factory labeled it) of the way I get it set that would be like the
factory recovery disk which has a rcd.dat file and an image directory
on disk 1 and a rcd2.dat file and an image directory on disk 2 so if
the thing crashed again at the startup options screen that has the
recovery option I could just use my home made recovery disk instead of
the factory ones??

By the way, you can make recovery disks of a sort. I did this with Windows
NT4, 98SE, 2000 Professional, and XP Professional.

First, install the operating system of choice, and all of the drivers, make
any changes to the OS settings to taste, and set up email accounts. Now use
your Acronis True Image disk to make an image of the system to your USB hard
drive. I used a Windows XP machine to construct the disk.

Copy all of the files on the Acronis disk to a folder on the hard drive,
wherever convenient. Download and install Magic ISO. Magic ISO has a feature
that can extract the boot sector of a bootable disk and save it as a single
file to your hard drive. Now use the feature to construct a bootable disk.
It's been a couple years since I've done this so I don't remember all of the
details, but it can do this. Add the boot sector to the project, then add the
core files of the Acronis program to the project. You can skip the "bonus"
software files as well as the .pdf instruction manual. Now add the Acronis
image of the desired computer from the USB drive to the project. Now burn the
project to disk. You will now have a bootable "Acronis" disk with an image of
your computer on the disk. Boot the machine with the disk and use the image
on the disk as the source and the hard drive as the destination and start the
restore. The result is identical to the original install no matter what you
have done on the hard drive in the mean time- just like a recovery disk.

I can't really see a lot of advantage in this because space is limited on
CD's and DVD's, you still have to have Acronis and the external drive, and
you are probably violating all of the Acronis copyrights and EULA. But, is
was an interesting project and it did work.

 

[kraut]

By the way, you can make recovery disks of a sort. I did this with Windows
NT4, 98SE, 2000 Professional, and XP Professional.

First, install the operating system of choice, and all of the drivers, make
any changes to the OS settings to taste, and set up email accounts. Now use
your Acronis True Image disk to make an image of the system to your USB hard
drive. I used a Windows XP machine to construct the disk.

Copy all of the files on the Acronis disk to a folder on the hard drive,
wherever convenient. Download and install Magic ISO. Magic ISO has a feature
that can extract the boot sector of a bootable disk and save it as a single
file to your hard drive. Now use the feature to construct a bootable disk.
It's been a couple years since I've done this so I don't remember all of the
details, but it can do this. Add the boot sector to the project, then add the
core files of the Acronis program to the project. You can skip the "bonus"
software files as well as the .pdf instruction manual. Now add the Acronis
image of the desired computer from the USB drive to the project. Now burn the
project to disk. You will now have a bootable "Acronis" disk with an image of
your computer on the disk. Boot the machine with the disk and use the image
on the disk as the source and the hard drive as the destination and start the
restore. The result is identical to the original install no matter what you
have done on the hard drive in the mean time- just like a recovery disk.

I can't really see a lot of advantage in this because space is limited on
CD's and DVD's, you still have to have Acronis and the external drive, and
you are probably violating all of the Acronis copyrights and EULA. But, is
was an interesting project and it did work.

Thanks all for the help / replies. Really appreciate it.