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Enhance your XP installation
Article by Dark Knight

» Enhancing Your XP Installation

Most have installed XP with success - else they would not been here.
But there is more to do to have a good running system, which can be recovered in case of an malfunction.

Recently, someone installed XP, but after a while, he was unable to
boot from disk.

Unfortunately, his CD also refused to boot - so he could not start the recover console, nor access it. The system was dead and unable to boot and had to be reinstalled.

One of the first steps, after you installed your system, is to install the recovery console.

What is this? is what i can realy hear now.

Well, lets install this beast first, it will not harm your system, but help you out of
some troubles later.

Start your commandprompt, and issue the following command.
D:\i386\winnt32 /cmdcons

Assuming your XP -CD is in drive D: and the path to the
executables is also i386 (if you have a full falvored CD, and not only
a crapt "recover cd from your vendor.)
Btw: this works not only on XP, but W2K too.

A windows pops up and tells you, what is going on now.
If you are concerned now with the next poping up window,
just press [ESC] or click cancel - else let it run if you have an
internetconnection available.

What you need at least, is the install cd in your drive.
After some seconds, XP shows you the successfully installation

If you boot next time, your bootmenu is enhanced by an item named recovery console.

In case you have W2K on the same box, it will let you choose between XP and W2K, to launch that console.

This console is a simple cmd interpreter (aka. CommandPrompt)
with some more features in it, to awaken an otherwise dead system.

Start it, have a look at the commands, type HELP at the prompt and get overwhelmed
by the list. Getting additional help for an command is fairly easy.
Simply type
help diskpart ( as an example) to get info about usable parameters or a general usage.

Lastly, if you had a look at several commands, type EXIT to quit the
console and force a reboot.

What is the benefit of installing this?
Well, easy enough - if your system refuses to boot because of an damaged
driver or dead registry (which can happen), your GUI won't boot anymore.
This little console however does not rely on above things, thus boots your system whenever the masterbootrecord is not damaged or the hd not otherwise complete corrupted.

The commands you have now available, are very powerful, you can scamble up
your system easily. Therefore this should be used not by total novice users, but the
experienced one has powerful options to recover his system after an hickup again.

One more important hint, if you run W2K and XP on the same box:
Make a copy of the files in your Bootdrive! as there are
arcldr.exe
arcsetup.exe
ntdetect.com
ntldr

This files get changed during the installation of the recovery console.
Although your W2K system will run as before, it might show a stopCode failure,
if you are going to shut down the box from W2K as before.
So keep above copied files in a safe place before installing the console, and
reaply them afterwards if you encounter the problems mentioned above.

In an next tip, i'll tell how to use XP's recover feature right from the GUI, to move your system back to a previous and functional known point.

==================================================

In the last Tip we installed the Recovery Console, to have additional options to awake an dead system. But - that's not all you have to do to be on the safe side of windows / life.

One of the most problems - most know it all: You got a new nice proggy - let's install it. Downloaded, installed, done and you played a while with it, everything seems fine. Late in the night - may be early in the morning as well, you decide to shutdown your PC, and go to bed. Next time you powered on your PC, you got mystic messages, apps refuse to start and all the enjoying stuff you know well from previous times.
Yes, you did something harmful to your system. But- no problem you think yourself, just kill that proggy you installed lastly: thought and done. But the problems are still there as you encounter quite quickly.

Now what?
If you had frozen the systemstate, or an backup, you would be able to revert to your functional system pretty quickly, but you had not. So next time before you install an new app, you do:

Walk through menu

menubar
start
all programs
accessories
systemtools
and carefully move your mousepointer to System Restore
Did you ever see it? Ok, fire up this proggy and get inspired from the options you have here. *grin*
Actual only two options, as you might not have an restore point, but now you can create one.
Create an restore point, you can revert to later.
Costs only some diskspace and a few seconds for you in case of troubles. Once a restorepoint gets activated / used, it will not be any longer in the list and anything installed afterwards -- has gone.
But you have a defined state you can rebuild your system from without spending hours ...
Before beginning to install the missing crap, it's a good idea, to immediately creating a new system state.

Although XP will not easily let you overwrite essential systemfiles, a registry setting or an driver might cause you trouble too.

PS: do not forget to look on the left side of that window for
System Restore Settings and see what's there!

===================================================

This time: Automated System Recovery

The Windows XP Automated System Recovery Feature allows you to boot into a computer that has experienced catastrophic failure. ASR works by installing a working copy of Windows XP and then restoring from a backup of your OS that you made when everything was working perfectly. This backup doesn't happen automatically, so you have to do it yourself.
Here's how:

Proceed like this:

Click Start and then click the Run command.
In the Run dialog box, type ntbackup in the Open text box and click OK.
In the Backup Utility, click the Automated System Recovery Wizard button. If this is the first time you started the ntbackup program, tell the Wizard that you don't want to see the Wizard again, and then restart the ntbackup program.
The Automated System Recovery Wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
On the Backup Destination page, type in a path for the backup file. Be careful! Don't use the C:\ drive or it might not work.
Click Next.
Read the text on the final page of the Wizard. Make sure you have a floppy disk available for the Wizard to write recovery information to.
Click Finish.
All system files on the partition that contains the operating system are backed up.
Click Close on the Backup Progress dialog box after the backup is completed.
Then close the backup utility.

If you find you can't start you system because a disk died or you installed something that prevents the operating system from starting, you can boot the Windows XP CD and then press F2 when the statement as the bottom of the screen asks you to press F2 to start ASR

===================================================

This issue: Boot Disk XP and others

Finally, in case you dismissed your CD, or just to be complete, we'll create a boot disk to even launch this XP installation from a floppy.

Here is how to:

Open Explorer, head over to disk drive a:

Right click and choose format

Do not check "make msdos bootable"

Click ok.

If ready, open root of drive C:

Unhide all files from being seen (remove System and hidden attributes

Now copy the following files to your floppy just formatted:

Look for these files to copy

boot.ini

ntdetect.com

ntldr

cmldr

"cmldr" is on your drive, if you installed the recovery console already.

Now you have a disk, you can start your installed system too.

This disk is no replacement for the bootable CD to install the system. But some older systems are sometimes hard to convince to boot from CD, so the floppy can help you much quicker.

A note to XP installation:
A dual installation W2K and XP onto the same machine works, but due to some changes, W2K has some glitches after the dual installation if XP uses the same partition for its booting files. W2K will boot happily, but fails in proper power off. Those files are ntldr and ntdetect.com, where ntldr is the problematic change.

But if you revert those files to original W2K, XP won't boot anymore because of the changed registry layout!

If you like or dislike the Windows Update provided by MS, doesn't realy matter, as long as you get those updates and enhancements to be as safe as possible in internet, and get fixes for other problems too, such as gaming.