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Recovery Disk

16 years ago

My wife was given a fairly new HP machine that has XP on it. I tried to make a recovery CD but the pop up say that the Cd was wrong type .. well we tried several other types and still no luck. BTW the original owner also had a problem in making a recovery disk and he just gave up on it.

My question is there another program I can use to make a recovery cd for her machine? I am assuming ( I hate that word ) a recovery disk is not the same as a back up disk right ???

Any thoughts on all this will be appreciated thanks.

Big Al

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Comments (7)

zep516
16 years ago
See if the link is helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: hp recovery disk information.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
16 years ago
you may be much better off simply using an imaging program and simply create an image of the system so that should something happen you can simply use that image to restore the pc, operating system and all. You can buy image programs like Acronis True image but there are a few good free ones. Here is a link to an article that evaluates a few.
8 free software to image/backup/ghost your computer (free alternatives to Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost, etc.).

then once you have that program you can create new images every so often so they are up to date. you can back up to dvd or cd or flash drive or an external usb drive.

If you need to get your windows cert key number from that pc in case you do not know what it is you can download this neat little program that will give you that info and it would also be a great idea to install belarc and let it run a scan and you can print off the info so you know exactly what is on that pc.
Belarc
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v2.0.1
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bpgreen
16 years ago
Are you sure the drive is a writeable drive? If it's a fairly new machine, it should be, but it's something to check.

Are you able to burn CDs using any other software (like making music CDs, etc)?

Does the program give any indication of what kind of CD needs to be used?
owbist
16 years ago
If I remember correctly HP for some strange reason only allow you to create a set of recovery CDs once so perhaps that has been done in the past.

Is the MS sticker readable on the side of the tower and can you read off the serial number of the XP installed? If so you can use another copy of XP if you need to re-install from scratch but when time comes to enter the 25 digit license number you use that one on the case, NOT the one that came with the CD. If you need to go this route you would need to visit the HP site armed with the computer model number to download the various drivers.
big_al_41
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks everyone all good ideas... will try a few and see what happens again thank you!

Big Al
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
16 years ago
I have owned several HP puters and it is correct that they only allow one set of recovery discs to be created. So if the original owner did that, as they should have, you may not have that option as stated.
In that case the imaging of the entire drive would be your best recourse. And if that number Owbist mentioned is not readable on the case you can use the link I provided for magical jellybean to recover your info from the pc.

Most HP's also do have a separate D partition which holds the recovery material.
grandms
16 years ago
I have HPs and was able to make one set of rescue disks using CD-R and one set using DVD-R. So I guess since I used different media for each set, it only counted as once. Both sets are usable, and I did use the DVD set to restore the OS to a new hard drive when the original HDD died.

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