What is 'Live CD'? The Live CD allows you to boot your OS directly from the CD-ROM. This is very useful if your hard drive is broken, the OS on the hard drive is corrupted, or you want to run some maintenance task like cold backup, disk imaging or full restore of your system.

Many OSes (like Ubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux and etc.) have this ability, but not Microsoft Windows XP. What Microsoft offer is called Windows PE. Where PE stands for 'Pre-install Enviroment'. WinPE is used by Microsoft and OEM vendors to install the Windows on your computer. WinPE provides you with command line interface where you can create custom script to install your Windows. This is over simplified description of WinPE. For detail information please check Microsoft's site for Windows PE.

Using Windows PE required great level of knowledge of Windows and advance use of command line interface. Manually you can start the windows own graphical engine and run some programs with GUI. Unfortunately Microsoft do not provide any light-weight desktop management.

There is a product called BratPE Builder. Full information about it can be found here. With this program you can build very custom installation of your windows that can be run directly from the CD. The best part is that you can add (or remove) plug-ins and customise it based on your needs.

Here we are going to build Live CD that allows as to create cold image (backup) of your system drive and restore if you need to do so.

Lets begin.

1. Download the latest version PE builder (self-installing package)

2. Download Runtimes DiskImageXML plug-in

3. Copy your Windows XP CD.

4. Slip Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (only if your original Windows XP CD is older and don't have SP2)

5. Install PE Builder

6. Start PE Builder

7. add Runtimes plug-in DiskImageXML

8. Create Live CD or ISO image of your Live CD

9. Test your CD.

Your are done.