making a copy of Windows XP

[Badgerbodger]

I recently bought a laptop with windows xp pre installed. How do I make a CD copy of this incase I ever need to re install it if anything ever goes wrong.

[vehelpfulguy]

Most modern laptops offer two options so you do not need to make your own copy, have a look at the documentation that came with the laptop, or talk to the company who sold you it.

The two options are:

A hidden recovery area on your hard disk. You should be able to restore Windows XP from that. Not all companies do this so check the documentation.

Or a recovery CD. Again, not all companies do this so check the documentation.

I bought a Dell PC recently and you had to pay 5 pounds extra to get the recovery CD. If you have not got a recovery CD then see if the company will sell you one.

(If they are reluctant, tell them you have bought a larger hard disk for the laptop and want to put Windows XP on that).

[rojash]

Even those laptops that have a hidden recovery partition usually offer a program which allows you to create your own recovery CD, so check the manual. After all a recovery partition is not a lot of use in the event of a hard disk failure!

[stevie21]

I think you're better off with something like Norton Ghost. Instead of using an XP CD and losing all of your installed programs this will "reinstall" absolutely everything at once.
Create a clone of your hard drive today and every program that's on it can be restored from this backup copy.
You'll need a fair bit of spare space on your hard drive for that though.