Many hardware companies sell their systems with a windows xp recovery cd which makes it most of the time impossible to install that operating system on a different system. This forces the user to either buy a new XP system or at least a standalone XP Cd, that is, unless you do what I’m going to explain here. The following steps create a bootable standalone installation system for your operating system that is not connected to the computer you purchased it with.
You only need one tool and the recovery CD of course. Download the tool XP Iso Builder and install it on your system. Create a temp dir for the new CD on your hard drive, name it XP for instance. Copy the complete recovery CD to the temporary folder. Make sure you copy hidden and system files as well. (check in folder options that they are shown when you browse dirs).
You might want to delete the folder $OEM$ in the temporary directory, it contains software that the manufacturers added to the recovery cd. Those software is normally not needed.
Start XP Iso Builder and click on the button convert recovery disk. Select your operating system under (1), browse to the temp dir in (2) and click on Search through hard drive automatically in (3). The i386 folder should be at least 420 megabytes in size, if more than one is found select the one with that size. The folder has to be on your hard drive and not in the temp XP folder that we created before.
Select start to begin the process and close when it is finished. Click on Start Choose Folder / Drive in the main window and select the temporary folder that we created. Select No afterwards.
Integrate Service Pack 2:
If your recovery CD does not contain Service Pack 2 you could integrate it to automatically have a up to date windows. Download Windows XP service pack 2 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers. Save the file to your hard drive and select Integrate Service Pack in XP Iso Builder. Browse to the file and select it, the integration of the service pack should begin.
Download and integrate Updates:
After we have integrated the service pack we surely want to integrate the newest updates for the operating system as well. The easiest way would be to upload a update pack that contains all updates since the release of service pack 2. One location to download that file would be the winboard website. Unpack the downloaded file on your hard drive and select the entry (8) Service Updates from the xp iso builder menu.
Browse to the folder that you unpacked the files to and hit ok once you are done. All updates will be added to your installation, this might take some minutes.
Once this is done we are ready to create the iso image
Create the actual ISO image:
Select (11) Finish from the menu and click on start integration. Select a filename and the creation starts.
After this is done you are ready to burn the iso to a cd with a tool like Nero for instance.
That is it. You created a full windows xp installation cd from your recovery cd and may now install it on different computers.
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20 Responses to “Upgrade a Windows XP Recovery CD to a full installation one”
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Sweet!. Been looking for this for along long time!.
Thanks for the tip! Will this work with any OEM version? Which OEM CD’s have you tried it with?
Luke I did try it with a XP pro CD that I had. Think it was from Dell but not sure right now. It should work with most, if not all, OEM CDs.
Oh, I’d like to add that you can customize the installation beyond what I have written here. You may integrate the xp key and all the settings that show up when you install the operating system. (you can even add user accounts, drivers and applications)
Means less work for you.
May have to do this to a DVD and also add my most used programs as well.
Pictures,other things I use on a daily basis.
Thanks very much for this tutorial. I ran into a problem when I tried this, however. When I clicked “Search through hard drive automatically,” the search stopped after a second and I got an “Error: 9999: script error” message, then the program closed. Can I point the program to the I386 folder in C\WINDOWS manually instead? I was also wondering why you have to copy the recovery CD into a temp folder? Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Andrew, sure you can do that manually by clicking on the … next to the white line in (3). Browse to the i386 dir and select it.
You have to copy the recovery cd to disk because this is where the new iso will be created from. All other files, like updates, will be integrated there.
Did you try burning it on a dvd instead ? Did you analyze the folders and check which ones are the biggest ?
How big is the recovery folder when you copy it from cd to your hard drive ? I see that you mentioned reinstallation cd not recovery cd, do you think that it is the same ?
How big is your i386 folder on your hardrive ? I think you must be doing something wrong but I have troubles finding out what..
You select the right i386 folder on your hard drive ? not the one that is in the folder xp, right ?
hey i have a question when i hit start, it says do you want to replace the i386 folder. am i supposed to?? will that mess up operation of windows??
Hi
I tried this and it seemed to be working until it came up with an error when installing XP, “the file usbehci.sys is corrupted” anyone know why this happened? I followed the instructions correctly.
wow, thanks! i have this installation cd, but it is not bootable. i tried so many different ways, and i even tried linux, hoping that it will let me run this cd, but it didn’t work.
i finally found your page, i was able to convert that cd to a bootable Cd, so i was able to reinstall the entire windows system, excellent!
thanks! ps: that iso builder doesn’t work with windows vista when i tried it.
will this work for windows xp media center edition 2005
your question is not very clear. if you just want to reinstall the windows media center, why don’t you just download the program and install it?
I am talking about reinsallying windows xp the entire system, this method worked for me.
You need to rename the file to UPPERCASE (USBEHCI.SYS or USBEHCI.SY_, and other drivers needed by txtsetup of xp, they are enumerated below while loading the drivers, ex. NT File System Driver (ntfs.sys) just rename them all to uppercase, most are already capitalized) then it should work!
I have used it for Windiws XP. its really amazing. I wonder can I use same software/steps for Windows Vista?
Waiting for reply……
Best,
Naeem
say i do this with my recovery cd, but on a friend’s pc. once i install to my pc, will i need the SERIAL or KEY or something? the problem is that i don’t have any numbers, and my current pc is fried.
or do i just call MS and speak to them? are the steps described in this tutorial legitimate as far as MS is concerned, in my particular scenario? and if i do need to contact them, will they even speak to me regarding XP or is support for it over with?