Hello,

I just got through removing some *horrible* malware with wonderful assistance from Rorschach112 on the "Virus, Spyware, and Trojan Removal" forum.

At the end of it all I realized that I really would like to install Windows XP Recovery Console so that it presents as an option at boot time. However, there is one big difficulty: I have only the original WinXP SP1 disc that came with the machine and have long since updated to SP3 through autoupdate.

If you try to run "winnt32.exe /cmdcons" from the disc you get an error telling you that your WinXP version is newer than the one on the disc and it won't install. The same thing occurs when I try the only other winnt32.exe file that's on my hard disc.

The ComboFix software that I used during the removal process appears to go to the Microsoft website and downloads the recovery console installer appropriate for the SP level on the machine it's run on. However, even after two attempts on mine, I kept getting the error, "Boot partition cannot be enumerated correctly," during the attempted install within ComboFix.

Does anyone know if there is another way to download and install the WinXP recovery console when you don't have the appropriate SP level disc and the version of winnt32.exe on hard disc is also from an earlier SP level?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Brian

You would want to slipstream SP2 and SP3 into your Windows XP CD.
Here is a tutorial for SP3: http://lifehacker.com/386526/slipstream-se...installation-cd
SP3 is a cumulative update so you don't need to slipstream SP2.
Then use this CD to install the Windows Recovery Console.

Another way is:
Click on Recovery Console Instructions in my sig to burn a CD which can boot to the RC. This CD looks just like the normal Windows Setup, except that you can't install or repair installations of Windows (just access the RC)