Bootable CD or USB

There may be an "easy" way to make a bootable XP disk, but I don't know of one. I have made one using a pretty detailed process known as Bart PE, using this to create what they called "The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" aka UBCD4Win. The reason for having to jump through the hoops in this case, is the fact that no one can just put an ISO cd image of Windows XP out there, without Microsoft coming to pay them a visit . If you want to learn more about this process, just go to UBCD4Win

Now, back to your issue. Since Linux is open source, people can and do put ISO images of bootable CD's out there for anyone to download. These should work OK for what you are wanting to do. Here's a search for bootable Linux ISO

Burning a bootable ISO of a CD should be a little more straightforward than the USB stick. Also, computers supported booting from CD long before they supported booting from USB. It may be that your system does not support USB boot (your BIOS settings should tell you the answer to that).

Good luck!

Tom

My System will support USB boot. I will look into the links you suggest. They are paths I have not yet pursued. I do understand the legal rights and am not trying to get around them. I have the original XP CD but it will not allow me to just get to a command prompt to delete the file, or correct it as needed. Thanks for your reply.

Doug

hi, mate it is very easy to boot your system using disk which u can find it out in http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm just go through the readit first part and work accordingly.

Regards

Ameer

An original XP CD should already be a bootable CD. Even if you made a copy of it, it still is bootable. Check in your CMOS for the following...Make your first boot device your CDrom. Enable boot from CD. Another thing you can try is to start your pc, as soon as it boots press F8 a couple of times. It should bring up a XP menu where you can choose safe mode etc.... Choose boot with last known good configuration. Hopefully this works as it will load from the last working restore point before you did the update.

If your PC is booting from the original XP CD & starting the install you should be able to select the repair option which will hopefully replace your corrupted file.

I have tried the F8 boot and the repair. All options in the F8 boot resulted in the exact same failure. All possable choices from the original startup disk result in the same error. I get a "Blue screen of death" with the same memory address each time. It is calling a file AVGID.sys, if I remember correctly. This resulted from an update from microsoft. I believe the file to be associated with AVG antivirus and it is trying to load anytime it is booted with the original cd or the OS that is loaded. My thoughts are to do a simple boot to cet a command prompt and locate the file and rename it to get past the error.

"It is calling a file AVGID.sys"

Could it be AVGIDS? Seems other people are having this problem.

Download any one of dozens of Linux CDs which are bootable and can read and operate with FAT and NTFS systems. Then you can located and destroy that rogue file.....

Knoppix is one for example, F-Secure also have one, to name but a couple....

Its not worth mucking around with either XP or USB sticks.....

Take the hard drive out and put it in another working PC. Boot from the PC and you can do anything you want on the HD.

Here is the easy way to make one with service pack 3, no less!
You will need the original bootable XP cd, another working computer, and this link: apcmag.com/how_to_create_a_bootable_xp_sp3_cd.htm

I found that this link loaded better:-

http://apcmag.com/how_to_create_a_bootable_xp_sp3_cd.htm

The tip is excellent, thanks.