Summary: If you don't have your Windows installation CD there are still a few things you can do. If you have an image of your CD, you may be able to do more.
I have no CD - how do I get at Windows XP setup?
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I discussed in a prior article what to do if you have no installation CD for Windows XP. But now once you've found your CD image - where's the setup?
What you need will depend on what you're attempting to do.
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If you want to make a change to your system configuration - perhaps adding an accessory that you neglected at the original setup - then the place to go is not setup, but the control panel:
- Start
- Settings (if you're using classic start menu)
- Control Panel
- Add or Remove Programs
- Add or Remove Windows Components
That will bring up the dialog that's extremely similar to setup in which you can select the optional Windows components to add or remove.
If you're looking to reinstall system files because you suspect corruption what you really need is the System File Checker. This utility validates that all of Windows' system files are correct and fixes those that are not:
- Start
- Run
- Type: "sfc /scannow" without the quotes followed by Enter
sfc may ask for your installation CD-ROM. (See this article if you don't have one.)
Finally, if you really, honestly and truly want to re-install windows, the first step would be to run your installation CD. If you don't have one, you may have an image of the CD on your hard disk. In the I386 directory are two files:
- winnt32.exe is the "32 bit" version of the character mode Windows setup. You may be able to run this from within Windows.
- winnt.exe is the "16 bit" version of the character mode Windows setup. Why a 16 bit version? If you can't run winnt32.exe and are able to boot from an MS-DOS floppy or are able to boot to Win9x DOS mode, then this setup program will work for you.
WARNING: character.exe and winnt32.exe are the "start-from-scratch", "do-it-all-over-setup" programs. Use them only if you want a complete re-install of Windows - possibly losing any prior custom configuration changes you made, depending on whether setup is installing on top of and can understand a prior installation.
Article C1875 - December 31, 2003
I had Windows XP on my system that was built for me by a friend, and it was format inadvertently with windows 98. I don't have a recovery disk. How can I obtain an installation disk that will boot from the CD drive and install windows XP again?
Posted by: Duke35 at March 3, 2010 2:35 PMHelp me the anti virus deleted my desktop my computer is slow . I want to reinstall windows xp without losing my programs I'm using xp have no cd please help.
Posted by: gary at March 4, 2010 7:04 AMhey im running windows xp and need to reformat it, (start from scratch like if it were just out of the box) but when i ran winnt32 it went through the process but once it loaded it was still the same as before, nothing changed. Please someone help me i need to start over since his setup is already screwed over.
Posted by: Mizery at March 4, 2010 7:58 PMI'm trying to reinstall system files on my XP system. When I run sfc /scannow, it asks for my installation CD (which I never got), but doesn't offer me a way to specify the path to the image (which I found, thanks to your other article).
Posted by: Lowell at March 13, 2010 11:22 PMI don't know how to setup windows with romovable.
Posted by: VinSavy at March 20, 2010 7:10 PM