Hi,
my skill level is about intermediate. recently i have successfully performed the procedure described at this site:
http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml
the author has given the procedure these titles:
How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a System with Windows Pre-loaded
Tutorial on how to create a Windows XP install disk from a system with Windows already installed
How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup Disk on a Preinstalled / Preloaded Windows System
to make a long story short, the outcome is pretty much what the author describes. it's possible to "pull" the xp operating system off of the hard drive and burn it on a cd (with imageburn, of course), but a few other files and directories have to be added to it. the end result is the equivalent of an xp installation disk. the license belongs to me, and the COA belongs to me and nobody else.
i have been successful three times with this procedure. once with a computer that i have had for years, once with a computer my sister sold me, and once with a computer i bought at a yard sale.
this time i attempted to make a disk from a computer that my wife had given to her by her boss, and it looked like it had succeeded. imageburn said the burn was successful, but the part that counts is, does the disk work to install xp to a hard drive? when i rebooted the computer with the freshly-made disk, i received the message:
"the file \i386\system32\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. error code 18. setup cannot continue."
in all fairness, it needs to be said that this particular computer was badly infected, but is totally clean, and was clean at the time of the making of the disk.
i would be most grateful if someone could help me with this problem.
BTW, imageburn is my favorite burning software. it's great!