http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers Thu, 23 May 2013 19:33:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/how-do-i-create-an-oem-style-bootable-recovery-partition/ http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/how-do-i-create-an-oem-style-bootable-recovery-partition/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:47:11 +0000 swinehart6803 Very simple question, but not so simple of an answer. I would like to create a hidden recovery partition on all of my companies laptops so that if/when it gets destroyed in the field, when the user boots up, they insert a cd that says, basically “press 1 to restore your system to factory defaults” or “press 2 to exit”.
I would of course start with a clean install of windows, with all drivers and updates, they use that image as the one to restore.
We are on a no-budget budget for IT and are not looking at buying Acronis, or a license of Norton Ghost for every laptop we use.
We dont have a volume copy of XP, so that blows the idea of cloning an image out. Plus it has to be “push 1″ easy for the end users who may be in another part of the world. Currently we just keep the eom cd for each machine and use that, but its very time consuming to re-load it each and every time the users crash or break it.
I’ve found some advice, but they all point to PARAGON, or Ghost, or Acronis. Or they point here, then here, then here, then when it boots change this.
How do the system builders do it?
All clients running XP PRO SP3, with IE7 and the basic, JAVA, FLASH ADOBE reader and a VPN client.
We can either have the restore option start on multi-floppies, a boot CD or boot thumb drive.

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