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How many Recovery CD's are needed for Windows XP Home?

4K views 52 replies 8 participants last post by  Couriant 
#1 ·
I have an IBM NetVista a22p and would like to know how many recovery cd's I need. I have only found two in my home and am wondering if there are more. Please let me know.
 
#4 ·
Thank you for the replies. I have read those manuals before but have not had any success finding information on the Recovery CD's. The problem I have is I upgraded this PC to Windows 7 and it is running extremely slow now with a Pentium 4 1.6ghz, 1gb ram, 40gb hdd. I really need the recovery cd's to get it back to windows xp.
 
#7 ·
It's not likely that formatting (if you even do that) will fail. Even if the recovery fails you can always reinstall Windows 7. Actually, reinstalling Windows 7 is what I would advise, but you only asked about the XP recovery.
 
#9 ·
Perhaps do a fresh install of Windows 7 instead of the upgrade... Upgrading may bring in problems from Windows XP.

As to 2 CDs, if I remember the days of yore, I think 1 CD was for the OS and the other was for drivers/utilities/etc.

I would suggest to make sure you have the drivers on hand on a USB stick/separate CD if you can.
 
#10 ·
When I installed Windows 7 I did a clean install, I think the reason it is slow is due to the lack of RAM (only 1gb). Before upgrading I researched a bit and saw people were running Windows 7 perfectly fine with 1GB RAM. Thanks for the advice I will have the driver on hand. Do you think that I will be able to restore it with 2 cd's?
 
#20 ·
I doubt that many people have any idea. Recovery partitions and disks were pretty rare before Vista. Usually PCs with XP pre-installed came with an XP installation CD and, sometimes, with an additional CD or two with drivers or utilities.
 
#15 ·
To answer your question, it's most likely the one that has 650MB is the first disc, and the second one may not be needed (like I mentioned, it's probably has tools/utilities/drivers etc). The setup will tell you if you need it, but there would be no other discs then those two.
 
#24 ·
A MS XP install CD wouldn't be very big, but a factory restore setup is likely to have some additional apps on it. So size depends on the OEM and what they added which would be???
On my old XP computers, I never was given any restore CDs. Just a restore partition and the option at first run to burn a set of restore CDs which I never bothered with.
I burned drive images after I added the additional apps I intended to use.
 
#21 ·
What I am saying is that the probability of a 3rd disc is 0.0001%. You should be fine installing XP.

According to some google posts, there are ways to install Windows XP via USB, if that helps, but since are none are from Microsoft, I would caution on those sites.

At the end of the day, we cannot 100% confirm this as we don't have that same computer and know how many discs there are. This will be trial and error.

Since you said you did a fresh install of Windows 7, then at least you have that as back up to reinstall if needed.
 
#23 ·
My 2 cents.

I'm with Frank.

Have you checked out the condition of your hardware?
Memory test?
Hard drive tests?
Prime 95 test?

That's really old hardware and replacement parts are going to be difficult, if even possible, to find if needed.

Personally, if the hardware was in tiptop shape, If I had to use that computer, I'd probably repurpose it with a Linux distro that runs well on old computers and yet still safe enough to use on the Internet.
 
#28 ·
If the factory reset disc kit you have includes 2 CD's, the one that has 650 MB of used space will be the one that contains Windows XP.
The other CD will contain the devices drivers and any extras.
Note: You didn't say if the factory reset disc kit is for Home Edition or Professional or Media Center Edition, and if it contains Service Pack 3.

If the disc drive is set first in the boot order in the BIOS, your computer should boot from with the CD that contains Windows XP and should start the factory reset procedure.
It's been 18 years since I did a factory reset in a computer that came with a Windows XP factory reset disc kit, so I don't remember the procedure.

I still use Windows XP Professional SP3 32-bit in one of my older computers for testing purposes, but it's in a larger capacity DVD that's integrated and contains all the available updates until May 2019.
I have to install the device drivers afterwards, so I have them saved in a separate CD.

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#29 ·
According to this document I found of NetVistas, the a22p models didn't come with recovery CDs. They came with what's called a "Software Selections CD-ROM" which contains the preloaded software but not the OS. If you look through the list, there are other models that came with one Recovery CD-ROM.

http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/withdrawnbook/nvwbook.pdf

Are the recovery CDs official ones or are they perhaps ones you made yourself at the time?
 
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