XP boot disk for troubleshooting

O negative

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I'm trying to troubleshoot a Dell laptop with XP (professional) that won't boot.

I also have an identical machine with nearly identical software on it that is working just fine.

I burned a CD with boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr on it that were copied from the good machine. I chose the bootable data disk option and used a standard English boot image supplied by the burning software.

When I "boot" from this disk from either machine I only get Dr. DOS. (Which is crummy because Dr. DOS won't even run CHKDSK!) I'm thinking that I don't have a proper boot disk. Is the "boot image" redundant? Should I just reburn it as a plain data disk? The burning software also gives the option to browse for my own boot image, but I don't know where (what directory) it might be.

Meanwhile, I do have a Linux live CD that boots fine on the bad machine.
 
No, but before I try more tools I need to get a better handle on boot image basics. I've created bootable CD's and USB sticks that worked without really knowing what I was doing. I'd like to rely on more than dumb luck.
 
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