Limit on recovery disks???

[Reo51St]

Is there a limit on how many times that you can use recovery disks?

Trying to recover T23 and it just loads a basic version of XP and only uses one of the disks. Does not ask for the other 2.

Have recovered a few T20'S AND T21'S.

Do not know what I am doing wrong.

Any ideas??? Thanks for the help.

[Kyocera]

No, I've used mine over and over. Probably dependent on the quality of the disc and how well you take care of them, i.e. scratched up, or tossed around

[Phazer]

Surefire way to do a complete reinstall is to format the HDD, (I've got a USB floppy and a W98 startup disk), and then remove the partition. Install the 1st CD and then reboot. This will reinstall the hidden partition, ask for both discs, load all the original software, (the old versions), and put XP (without SP2) back on. I don't know if just removing the partition will do it or not, I didn't try it that way.

Also, don't be alarmed if you see a W98 spalsh screen at the beginning, and on a couple of the boots, it will have options of booting to either "windows" or "XP". Don't hit any keys, just let it timeout, (about 10-20 seconds) and that will eventually be gone.

[SeanM]

Trying to recover T23 and it just loads a basic version of XP and only uses one of the disks. Does not ask for the other 2.

That's what happens if you hit F12 to select the CD as the device to boot to, rather than setting the CD drive as the default boot device in the BIOS.

[Eric Giles]

I have had this happen before, and I finally figured out a sure-fire way to make the recovery discs work properly everytime.

1. First of all, go into the BIOS and make sure that the CD/DVD drive is set as the first boot device-this is very important later on in the process.

2. Boot with a DOS boot floppy or Windows 98 CD that has fdisk and format.

3. fdisk the drive, removing all partitions. Then, create one large partition.

4. Reboot, go to a DOS prompt and do a format c:

5. As soon as the format is complete, do fdisk /mbr.

6. Put in the first recovery CD and reboot. The process should go smoothly with no issues.

Maybe there is an easier way to do this, but after numerous times of going thru the process and it failing, this has been the only way I can be sure it works everytime.