How can I make recovery CDs from my USB HDD?

[tinaungkhine]

I bought a laptop and burned 4 recovery CDs for recovery purpose. Instead of burning as disc images, I just copied and pasted these 4 CDs to my USB HDD as 4 folders called "RecoveryCD 1", "RecoveryCD 2", "RecoveryCD 3" and "RecoveryCD 4". Now my laptop got problem and I lost my 4 recovery CDs. All I have now is 4 recovery folders in my USB HDD. I burned another 4 CDs as data disc from my USB HDD, but it didn't work out (it didn't boot because they are just data discs). I again burned my first recovery CD as a bootable CD, and it booted but didn't automatically install XP, drivers and other softwares. It just appeared some sentences on a black screen and cursor is waiting for me to type after the text, "A:>". I wonder how I can burn my recovery CDs from my USB HDD to be able to recover all of my window, driver, and some softwares as my 4 recovery CD that I lost. Please help me somebody. I'm depressed because most of my work for school is dependent upon my laptop.

 

[matt_aj]

Unless they copied over as .iso's you probably won't get them to autorun when it boots. Your on track with the bootable CD. You should be able to boot to that and then type "dir" this should show you the directory of what is on the disk. Look for something that resembles setup.exe or install.exe or something of that nature. That is normally the install to run the program.

 

[tinaungkhine]

Unless they copied over as .iso's you probably won't get them to autorun when it boots. Your on track with the bootable CD. You should be able to boot to that and then type "dir" this should show you the directory of what is on the disk. Look for something that resembles setup.exe or install.exe or something of that nature. That is normally the install to run the program.

Unfortunately, there is no setup.exe or install.exe. There is .iso file, and I burned CDs both as a data CD and as a bootable CD, but the data CD didn't boot and the bootable CD wanted me to find the exact file to run. I don't know which exe I should run but there is no install.exe or setup.exe. All they have is like debug.exe, fsdisk.exe and format.sth. I ran fsdisk.exe and it wanted me to do more complex thing which I don't know like create primary drive, create extended drive, make drive active, etc. Is that possible to make CDs to autorun and recover automatically? If not, which files I should look for other than setup.exe and install.exe?

 

[matt_aj]

Did you just burn the iso as a file to the CD? ISO files are image files. Basically it is a disk image that is zipped into a single (.iso) file. If you use a burning software such as Nero or Roxio, it should allow you to "Burn Image to Disk" or something similiar. You can then choose the iso file and it will put the image onto the disk, not just the file. You can only put one iso file per cd since it is an exact copy of the cd and not just a file. You want to make sure you "Burn image to disk" and not "make a data CD". If this works correctly, it should be bootable and auto run. You should also be able to browse the disk and instead of seeing just an iso file, it should show all the files that were contained in the iso file.

 

[tinaungkhine]

I tried and burned backup CDs as the website said http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=297 (It's about to make bootable XP) I thought I got backup CDs, but after all backup things are over and system restarted, it said hal.dll file is missing, so OS can't be loaded. So I tried to install XP with CD of my friend using my XP product key. I couldn't format with NTFS file system. In the middle of installing XP, error happened. So I did quick format with NTFS. It worked, but when I'm about to activate my window, there is no installion ID coming up. It should be displayed 7 groups of 5 digits or something. I updated product key with my product key again. But the installion ID still didn't appear. I think maybe my hard disk gets problem or something. I'm not sure of what happening to my laptop. I think I should send it to servicing. But now I'm still trying to install XP and my backup CDs again. If I can't do this time, I'll give up and send my laptop to get repaired. Thank you for your help. I do appreciate of all of your help.

 

[managed]

You need a working PC wih XP and a CD writer (burner).
Copy the ISO files from your CD's onto the hard drive then download this free XP add-on :-
http://www.devhood.com/tools/tool_details.aspx?tool_id=143
Install the add-on then right click each ISO file in turn and burn them to blank CD's.
Try to install XP using the newly burned CD's.

EDIT : download the .MSI version using the link nearer the top of the page.