Can I use DDE Share to make recovery disk for netbook?

mamazaac

My son recently bought a netbook which crashed on him. The IT dept where I work got XP up and running again, but I didn't have a windows authentication code. They told me that if I had a recovery disk this would have it on, but none was sent with the netbook.

Well, that netbook went back and now have a replacement. The IT Dept have given me instructions on how to create a recovery disk through the nt backup utility in xp. Trouble is, for some reason, my son's netbook doesn't have this on it.

Not finding this utility, I went to microsoft website to see if I could download it. However, they don't seem to offer it now, only something which can restore backups you made in xp into vista. I then looked at download.com, but this only comes up with other programs that will backup and I'm not sure whether any of these are suitable to make a recovery disk.

I then searched in microsoft "make recovery disk" and one of the suggestions is to install the recovery console. However, this does say this is recommended for advance users only who can use basic commands to identify and locate problem drivers and files.

I then wondered whether it would be possible to share the nt backup over the network with my son's netbook. (I have already connected him to the network).

Googling, it looks as though there may be ways to share program files, but these all look a bit complicated. However, when I searched "share program files" in the help and support section on my pc, it referred me to DDE Share. I have opened DDE Share, but cannot work out how to use it.

So, my questions are:

1. Is DDE Share what I need? If so, what do I put in all the boxes which come up when I click add share?

2. If this isn't the way, is there a straightforward way to share program files (both pc and netbook are running xp)?

3. Should I just install the recovery console and then, if it crashes, take it in to the IT dept at work to sort out? Presumably they would be advanced enough users to able to "use basic commands to identify and locate problem drivers and files".

4. Does anyone have any other suggestion on how to make a recovery disk? (Although I am using the word 'disk', there is no dvd drive on the netbook, so am going to have a go at formatting a usb stick so that I can use that instead).

All I want to do is make some sort of recovery media in case it crashes, but am hitting a brick wall at every turn. In view of what happened with the first netbook, I am worried about it crashing again before we get something sorted out; so please reply if you can help.

Many, many thanks in advance to anyone who can come up with a solution.

bob_man_uk

NT backup should be a part of windows XP from the word go.

I havent got an XP machine to reference to but it should be a simple case of opening up add and remove programs and on the left there "should" be an option to add and remove windows features, one of them should be backup (or naming similar)

if there isnt then there are ways to make a bootable USB stick which can be used to recover netbooks, though tbh, XP is a nightmare for installing via anything but CD, it may be a whole lot easier to invest in an external DVD drive and use whatever utilities the manufacturer give you for making recovery disks.

closed

To backup everything to a usb stick, you need disk imaging software, macrium reflect free, driveimagexml, if there is a restore partition, it will backup that too (provided you have space on the usb stick)

If it does go wrong, then you have the data, but need to make a bootable usb drive with the macrium/driveimagexml client on to get at it, which is fiddly, much easier with a CD/DVD drive.