Reinstalling Windows XP without original disks?

[cdcq12]

I have a friends computer that I had to format because there was corrupted data and such on the harddrive and he doesn't have his original MS XP disks. Is there a way I can download the data and use the code on the back of his computer or are there any other options?

[Paul Komski]

I wouldn't dream of downloading windows; too many pirated and infected versions out there. Beg, borrow or copy a good installation CD from someone with the same version (eg home, pro, etc) and use it along with the product key on the back of the computer.

[cdcq12]

O! That makes sense. I can do that. lol Thanks!

[awaj]

if you have a floppy disk drive, there is a way to get the floppies from the microsoft website. I don't know how long the downloads will take and such as I never had to go that route.

[Paul Komski]

there is a way to get the floppies from the microsoft website
True its at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994 but you still will need an installation CD. The floppies only do the initial booting part.

You should download the Setup disks if all the following conditions are true:

* You are installing a new, full retail version of Windows XP.
Note An upgrade installation of Windows XP does not require the Setup disks.
* You have a working CD drive, but you cannot start your computer from your CD-ROM.
* You can start your computer from a floppy disk drive.

[awaj]

I thought they had disks that did the install for people with out a CD drive

[Paul Komski]

I thought they had disks that did the install for people with out a CD drive.
The six setup floppies for WinXP are sort of equivalent to the single DOS-based floppy that could be used to prepare a system for a Win9x installation. The i386 folder used for a normal WinXP Pro SP2 installation is 527MB so it would be amazing if six floppies could somehow contain all that data. The real reason for their presence was on older systems that had no ability to boot to a CDROM and to simply setup the initial text based part of setup with such things as the addition of drivers using F6 and so on. After the first reboot it would be necessary for setup to access the CDROM.

In fact one can nearly always run an installation from a DOS based floppy that can access a CDROM as long as i386/winnt.exe is invoked and not setup.exe - the main catch is to have a floppy that contains smartdrv, which needs to run straight away or else the file copying will be very slow and unlikely to ever complete.