making a recovery cd for new computer

[beatbox]

sorry for all these posts but i dont want to mess up anything so yeah...

i want to create a recovery cd like the ones you get with pre-built computers....where you simply pop in the cd and it formats and reinstalls windows for you

i partitioned 6 gb, 5.xx gb to be exact to do that

anyone have reccomendations to how to do this or is it better to just do it the long way ( and can someone tell me the long way i always had a recovery disk so i never got to format that way)

thanks

[Silver Bullet]

With such a large partition (~6GB) your going to have to go for DVD-Rs .. which is not a big deal. The only reason i see for not doing a recovery cd, is that be the time you need to recover windows, all the drivers will be old and you just have to reinstall everything again anyway. With WinXP installs taking less than 20min (for me at least) its almost not worth the time/expense.

Anyway... I would go with Norton Ghost (you will need the newest version, if you have SATA drives). Check their site for compatibly issues.

[beatbox]

so how do i do it the long way?
how can i make sure that when formatting my other partitions dont get touched and windows loads on to the right partition

[Silver Bullet]

Norton Ghost will set all that up for you ... You tell it what partition you want to image.

[beatbox]

no i mean how do i format it manually....

[Silver Bullet]

Insert the Windows XP cd, and it take you to a DOS based screen where you can choose what partition you want to format / reinstall windows on. Make sure you do format (QUICK format) the drive your about to install on, otherwise it be pretty messed up after your done. If the partition your installing on is over 4GB, use NTFS.

If you have never done a Windows reinstall before, make sure you backup all your important stuff (you never know), and download all the lastest drivers for your computer and burn them to CD, as its likly your network card will not be detected right away and you be screwed.

[pluto]

IMO, it's not really worth the trouble, cause unless you want to recover your system very often, by the time you use the disc you create all the drivers / security updates / service packs will be out of date and you will spend just as much time updating the system as if you had just loaded it clean with the latest drivers for your hardware.