Some thoughts, for anyone faced with this type of problem on a dual
boot box in the future: My first thought was to try to Rescue the
WinXP Spanish language installation that came on the Dell Dimension
2400, out of the Dell factory. Later, I decided to wipe the entire
drive, since I now have a WinXP English language Restore CD and I
wanted to redo CentOS5, so I would have room to experiment with VMware
Server. With regard to restoration or rescue of WinXP on a dual boot
box, I believe the method Ross explained last week, about doing it
from CentOS5, would be the fastest and easiest. For those with boxes
dedicated 100% to WinXP, I believe the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows,
which Phil mentioned (based on the BartPE Live CD) is the way to go. I
downloaded the 196.6 MB file from http://www.ubcd4win.com and I have
copied the contents of the Dell WinXP Restore CD to my HD. I like the
fact that they explain workarounds, for those using a Dell WinXP
Restore CD to make the UBCD4WIN CD. One of the mistakes I made, was
after I got the box in 2005. On other new systems, I've wiped the
drive and done clean installs, with four (4) partitions for Windows.
Had I done that in 2005, I would have known that the Drivers for the
box are not on the Dell WinXP Restore CD or on the Dell Driver CD that
came with the box. Fortunately, last week, after I mounted the NTFS
partition read only, I not only copied my data onto CD's, I copied
other files, which turned out to include the Driver for the NIC. I
believe the audio and video Drivers are also on the CD I made last
week. :-) I went ahead and wiped the drives on the boxes of my wife
and daughter, since they were out of town. The installation on my
wife's box (Compaq Evo D300v) was the easiest. All of the Drivers for
the Compaq Evo were on the Dell Restore CD, with the exception of the
Driver for an inexpensive store brand web cam we bought recently. I
will need to buy OEM license's for that box and daughters box. More $
for Microsoft.... All of the Drivers for my daughters box (Dell
Dimension 4300) were on the Dell WinXP Restore CD too. I've
configured wife and daughter as Restricted Users in WinXP, as Ross
suggested. Special thanks, to everyone who responded with ideas! Lanny
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