Windows XP File Protection Question

[SMMAssociates]

Hello again all.... Been way too busy to hang here, unfortunately....

But I've got a problem that somebody here may be able to help me with. And, WTH, if Cvetkovic doesn't figure out where I live, I should be safe....

After something like six or seven years I had to replace my old #1 desktop (1ghz Celeron). My local builder quoted me about $1200.... I cheaped out and ordered a machine from Office Max for about $800. Good enough for my needs, and not all that proprietary inside. (HP/Compaq Presario.)

Since this is a replacement I started out by restoring my old "C" material with a "DO NOT REPLACE" setting (using "STOMP"). Veritas finally got it mostly right....

SOMETHING clobbered a system file and XP posted the expected "you went and done it" message. However the message doesn't specify a drive (it should - I've had it before) or give any sort of "pick a drive" option for the CD AND HP/Compaq doesn't supply a Windows CD. You can make a two-DVD "recovery" disk which may be sufficient but if you don't have the option to specify a location it's not a lot of help. (XP is pre-loaded and there's a hidden "D" drive on the thing that contains a "return to factory specs" copy of the software.)

The recovery disk seems to have a complete XP on it but it also appears to be a "suicide option" - two of them. One only replaces all Windows material but that effectively uninstalls anything that I installed (data survives but the necessary registry entries go away). For folks who run Word and AOL it's probably a non-issue but I've got dozens of other applications....

The other recovery disk option appears to be a complete reformat & reload....

Anyway when mine popped after about three hours of hammering I had only the choice of "continue". A later re-boot resulted in a BSOD. I ended up running the first suicide option. That ate three hours of work. It would have been trivially easy to just stick a CD in the drive but....

I plan on having this happen again. A lot of my old apps will happily trash XP's system files (told you I'd done this before) and I can't suicide the thing at that point.

I talked to HP and the gal (apparently in India) wouldn't send me a "real" copy of XP or let me talk to a supervisor. (It does appear that recovery disk may actually let me do all this if the blankety-blank registry can be hacked to find it. It also may be set up so that creating the recovery disk may do the registry hack for me.)

In the meantime I've ordered a copy of XP that would be a legal suicide install (I'd have to format & all that but I can reload my stuff from a backup - only a few WinAps are installed yet). But I'd rather just hack the registry.

SO, after all this noise, can anybody point me to the appropriate registry hack to allow me to get the thing to look on a CD or DVD instead of just telling me that file protection is mad?

(I'd just return the thing, but I really like the machine, and it's a lot of work and time wasted to yank it out and re-package it and then get the old system back onto the desk. If it'll keep running that long....)

I mucked with the "Knowledge Base" with no success. It's normally in the Registry someplace, but searching for "D:" isn't going to cut it because there's no "D:" there....

TIA and regards to all!