How to make a windows xp boot up disc

We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article methods. Things You'll Need. Related Articles. Author Info Last Updated: October 26, Method 1. You might have to restart your computer after the installation. Method 2. Open the command prompt. This will open the command prompt.

Method 2. Download the Windows boot sector. You can download the Windows boot sector legally and for free from various places online. Be sure that you are downloading from a trusted source, and that you are downloading a Windows XP boot sector in the correct language. Place the boot image in the root of your C: drive. It is typically called w2ksect. This will be required during the burning process. Download and install ImgBurn. There are a variety of free programs available that can create bootable discs.

This guide will assume you are using ImgBurn. Adjust your settings. Open ImgBurn and switch to Build mode. In the output menu, choose whether you are burning to a blank disc or creating an image on your hard drive. Select the Options tab. Make sure that Recurse Subdirectories is checked. Select the Advanced Tab and then select the Bootable Disc tab.

Check the box for Make Image bootable. Select None Custom from the Emulation Type dropdown menu. Click the Folder icon and select the w2ksect. Change the Sectors To Load value from 1 to 4. The burn process will commence. The time this takes will vary depending on the speed of your CD burner. Method 1: Step 5 created an error regarding file destination. That bootable CD is then a fully functional version of Windows which should allow you access to the other drives on your system.

The real value in BartPE is in fact that Builder which handles most of the steps for you. Knoppix is a version of the Linux operating system specifically designed to be run from a bootable CD.

In many ways the UI can be very similar to Windows, so many things will be quite familiar. Personally I find it quite easy to download, burn and boot a Knoppix CD, and for the longest time that was my recovery method of choice.

Ubuntu is a different distribution of Linux. However the default distribution CD actually boots as a stand-alone operating system much like Knoppix. The trick is figuring out which one. It assumes a fair amount of technical competence to figure out which boot disks will apply in your situation.

As a result, I include it here for completeness, but actually recommend one of the prior solutions for most folks. The bad news, to address one more aspect of your question, is that none of these solutions will allow you to run or revert to a restore point. Your best bet there is to boot from your hard disk into Safe Mode, which should allow you to do so. The approaches above will allow you to recover files from your machine, however. Subscribe to Confident Computing!

Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week. If you move the directory or drag and drop it, and you make a mistake, your mistake will be permanent. It may take a while for the copy operation to complete, but it's safer this way. If you're not sure how to copy, follow the following procedure: Highlight the I folder using Windows Explorer. Right-click the folder and select "Copy". The folder should be empty at the moment.

Right click the empty space in the window and click "Paste". A very lengthy copy procedure will take place. To verify that you have copied the folder and not moved it, return to the top of C: and check that the I folder is still there and that the original files in that folder are still there.

Create an ASCII text file with only the word "Windows " without the quotes and including the final space after the word "Windows" in it, followed by a new line.

To do this, open up Notepad. Type the word "Windows" without the quotes and following my case exactly that is, "W" is a capital letter and the rest are in small letters.

Then type one additional space. Do not add anything else to this file. Do not change anything - for example, do not type everything in capital letters or anything like that. The contents of the file must be exactly as I said, or Windows setup will issue an error message.

Save the file with the filename "WIN51" include the quotes so that Notepad will not add a ". Again, the filename's spelling and case must be exactly like mine. Note carefully what I said above. There is an exception to this. Otherwise, skip to the next step. The reason is that updating your running Windows system does not automatically update the I directory.

Important : if you did not configure Windows to show you the full filename you should probably do so before changing the name of the file. Otherwise, you may be inadvertently saving the file as "XPSP2. EXE" without your knowing. That is, you see the filename as "XPSP2. As a side benefit, the service pack 2 updater will also create a few files including setup. To slipstream SP 2, first open up a command prompt.

To do this, click the Start menu, select the Run menu item, and enter the words "cmd". Click the OK button. A black command prompt window will open. After the program finishes, you can close the command prompt window. Don't worry if the directory does not contain files like "setup.