Recovery disk

[Davisr]

Having soooo many problems with XP, I just want to start over.
Pc did not come with a recovery disk.
Dell has a one time use program to burn a cd recovery disk. Every time I try to run it, it gets halfway thru and gives me an error message "image for OS could not be built."
Of course I am out of warrenty and Dell wants $59 just to talk to me and there is no e-mail option
 

[Shane]

You will need to get a cd image of XP off the net then. Is yours home or Pro?

This is a XP image file from MS with SP3 already on it
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=25129

Shane

[Davisr]

I have the home version of XP.  I downloaded that image file from microsoft, unzippped it and I assume it went to the correct place. I then rebooted the machine and got the same result.

[Shane]

Its a ISO file, it is a cd image.

So you use a program like imgburn to burn the image to a cd.

But even with that it is just a windows xp cd and installer and not the recovery disks from the mfg. Those types of disks put your system back to the way the system was when you bought it. I hate those.

I always reinstall Windows myself, but if you havent ever done that before they you are stuck with trying to get the recovery disks from them.

Shane