system restore for xp in DOS?

[Wayne431]

I remember seeing something a few months back that did a restore from a dos prompt or floppy disk. Anyone know how to do this, or of any links?

[need Tos]

What you saw was a restore from the recovery console - which looks like a dos prompt. The commands are similar. One way of getting to the recovery console is with a set of 6 disks.

Other more convenient ways of getting to the recovery console are booting off the cd. Or better, installing it as an option in the start menu (F so you don't need a cd. (If you updated windows xp to Sp2, then you will have to slipstream the xp cd, making it xp sp2 in order to install the recovery console).

There are different types of XP boot disk. There is the 6 disk set - where you can get to the recovery console. And there is the 1 disk formatted in xp with 3 files (ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini).

You could theoretically, boot up with a windows 98 boot disk or boot cd, and then if xp is installed on a fat16 or fat32 partition you could access the files from a real dos prompt. Or, if XP was installed on an NTFS partition then you could do that with a fantastic program called NTFS PRO, which is infinitely better than ntfsread.exe from ntfs.com. There is a demo of NTFS PRO that is readonly, that is also infinitely better than ntfsread.exe The place to get NTFS PRO or the demo, is www.sysinternals.com/.

*Here is the 6 disk set for XP home
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

*The 6 disk set for XP Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-4FED408EA73F

*The '3 file boot disk' (NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT BOOTDISK.COM) http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;305595 you can make the disk by opening up the command prompt, doing format a: then putting boot.ini, ntdetect.com and ntldr on it.

note: I recommend using a sector editor, like Roadkil's sector editor, this shows the boot record of the disk, which actually contains the names of the files that the disk looks for on bootup. Thus showing the difference between a disk formatted as an msdos boot disk, and a disk formatted in windows xp(via right clicking A, or by format a. BTW, if using the 'right click A:' method to format the disk within xp, then be sure to uncheck the 'msdos boot disk' option.


* Recovery console commands
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...s.mspx?pf=true

and related document (includes installing the recovery console)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

[need Tos]

the Win XP 3 file boot disk has nothing to do with the dos prompt. It just lets windows use the 3 files on the boot disk to load up windows instead of the ones on the hard drive which may be missing or corrupt or may have a badly configured boot.ini

I only mentioned it because I mentioned the 6 file set. The 6 file set can get you to the recovery console that you saw.

[Wingit]

It's either what the other poster said or this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...EN-US;q3044449