Any way to go about reformatting a PC running, Windows XP without the original CD?

I'm at my parents house at the moment and they've been having some major crashing/slowdown on their PC. I can't quite locate the source of all the interference, my guess is it's just the culmination of all the various useless little things that have been downloaded onto it overtime. It's about time for a wipe anyway. They bought this PC secondhand some time ago, but the man who sold it to them neglected to include the Windows CD. There's really no way we can contact him right now so that's outta the equation. Is there anyway I can perform a clean install of Windows XP on this PC without the CD?

Doesn't the D: drive have all of the recovery files?

I do have a drive by the name of HP_RECOVERY (D:), not quite sure how it works though. When I click on it I get an HP logo along with:

I think you can burn it onto CDs

???

Burn what?

All the recovery files. Atleast I think that's what my brother did. Don't remember how he did it though.

I think when the system starts up it says something like "F[number]: System Recovery." Press the function key it tells you to press.

http://www.mecronome.de/xfdisk/index.php

I... don't quite understand how this works. When I try to open "XFDISK.EXE" I get the message: "Failure reading bootmanager.". Am I supposed to put this on a floppy and reboot the system? If so, what do I do after that?

Just in case you didn't know, xfdisk will partition your hard drive, but it won't reinstall windows. So even if you do that, you still need the CD (or some way of reinstalling windows).

This post has been edited by cubehead on Dec 17 2006, 11:29 PM

Ah. So I could partition my hard drive and then install an older version of Windows? Might just try that. Can you just clean your existing partition and then install Windows?

This post has been edited by CloakBass on Dec 17 2006, 11:59 PM

yes, you can delete your existing partition and make a new one (i'm not sure if this thing supports ntfs though, just warez partition magic so you can be sure); in fact, you might want to consider having two partitions, one to install windows on and another to hold your everyday files/programs