Rescue Disk leads to Error Message

I'm contemplating having to do a major rebuild of a Windows XP PC and have been testing my ATIH2012 Boot disk to check I can if necessary use it to reinstall the operating system.

Unfortunately when I choose the ATIH option it goes to a black screen "Loading Acronis please wait" it then gives a message about disconnecting IRQ35 and after a long time (5mins) reports "ERROR asr: reading /dev/sdb[input/output error]".

I then used an old rescue disk from ATIH 2011 (I have used Acronis for several years). This was more successful and did get me to the ATIH backup, restore etc screen but the only problem was that the mouse did not work so it was almost impossible to use the interface.

Has anyone got a foolproof way to generate an ATIH rescue disk?

Thanks.