I have a DVD for a laptop to reinstall win XP, it worked before, but this time it wouldn't because somehow disk got damaged even though in sleeve. I used a cd recovery program I used before with good luck called roadkil's unstoppable copier. all the files it showed were recovered fine. now that I have them copied I tried using win2flash to make a bootable image, but because of the manufacturers pre boot program it's not working, and errors out. any ideas of how I could recover the disk, I tried just doing copy to USB, but didn't work not sure if can just rip and burn new DVD and will work. can get new media, but $30 for like 3 DVDs from Toshiba, and they add lots of junk, that I think is half of the problem why in 3 yrs its crashed about 3 times.

 

Many/Most commercial products intentionally leave a cluster or sector intentionally bad in mass production.

This causes the errors you are seeing when using the meida, too many bad reads, or too few if you "fixed" the disc image.

Best bet is to take it to a used CD/DVD shop and have them polish out all scratches from the disks, totoal cost: $2/disc.

If that doesn't work, order a new set, then uninstall the parts you don't want.

 

when you copy bootable disc it is not enough to copy files, you also need to copy bootsector. if you managed to loose it, there is still hope, you can download boot discs for XP from Microsoft and make bootable disc:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

 

Might want to take a look at Magic ISO.
http://www.magiciso.com/index.htm

It can make a copy of the CD boot sector and burn it to a new CD or DVD. I found it when I was faced with a similar problem. Has been well worth the cost of registration.

 

You can use any Windows installation medium, only your serial number is required, and in recent years, online activation. Don't know if they use it for WinXP.

There are no defective sectors but yes these media are bootable.

 

Hello,

You could also have a look at IMGBURN:
http://www.imgburn.com/

Bertus