[geeks] WinXP CD help

[Dan Sikorski]

Dan Duncan wrote:
> I'm trying to restore a Dell laptop using the included Windows XP
> "Reinstallation CD" but it's horribly scratched.  (This is actually
> one of the CDs that is just WinXP without all the extraneous Dell crap
> because I have used it before.)
> The only other WinXP CDs I have access to are non-OEM XPPro versions
> which will not take the product key on the sticker
> on the laptop because it's an OEM reg code, not a "real" reg code and
> also probably because it's Pro and not Home.  (Don't get me started)
> I tried resurfacing the CD which helped some, but there are still 8 or
> so files that won't read (one of them is driver.cab of course) and I'm
> wondering if anyone has any tips on getting this installed.   Can I
> consolidate working copies of the corrupted files from a non-OEM CD
> and have them work with the remainder of the OEM CD?   If so, what's
> the best way to do that?  I use Windows as rarely as possible so I'm
> not really sure how to re-master a working bootable CD from the other
> two.  NT allows booting the CD to a command prompt and I can run
> setup.exe from inside an existing directory on the drive that has all
> the source files.  Is there a way to do that from XP?
>
>   

Have you tried making a copy of the reinstallation CD?  Some drives deal 
with scratches better than others, so you might get a working copy that way.

    -Dan Sikorski