Recovery for XP off of usb stick w/o recovery disks?

elemming

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Jan 19, 2014
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Aspire One netbooks do not have optical disks built in, did not come with recovery disks but they are available for purchase. The netbook has a startup error and will not get to windows - error missing bootmgr. I thought XP didn't even use bootmgr.
What is the simplest way to create and run a windows xp repair and recovery cd emulator - booting off the netbook's usb port without buying a recovery disk and an external drive for the netbook?
I am thinking an ISO of the XP recovery console file on a bootable usb is a place to start.

 
Not sure what you mean by "XP recovery console file".

Get an XP disk, create an ISO file from it, use WinToFlash to make the ISO into a bootable USB drive. You should also be able to use the netbook recovery partition to restore it, although that will wipe the drive.

I don't even know if the Acer disks will give you an option to repair the Windows setup or if they can only be used to do a full factory restore.