I'm thinking of shrinking my drive so I can install another OS on it, but I'm not sure what I need to do to create a bootable cd so I can run the recovery utility in case Windows XP doesn't start up after shrinking the drive. What do I use in order to do this?
Just get macrium reflect it's free and use that to make an image of your c: partition. Save this image backup on a external drive. Next from within macrium reflect create a bootable cd. Make sure you test this bootcd, that it will bootup your computer and recognize your external drive. This bootable cd is what will bootup your computer and from there it will allow you to access your external drive that has the backup file. Next just restore your image back into the drive. Also download the free "paragon rescue kit 9.0 express" bootcd. Sometimes when partitions are changed this might cause the drive letters to switch around when you restore windows xp, the rescue kit has a "boot corrector" that can change drive letters. There are other free imaging software "paragon drivebackup express" and "driveimage xml" , when in doubt use 2 image backup software. You can never be too careful. I use true image version 10, it's never let me down but I have also used macrium reflect and it restored my xp computer with no problems.
