Question 'bout XP

I have a friend that has an older laptop that has a Win XP Home COA on it and the hardware seems to work OK, but it really need to have the OS re-installed and start over. Someone gave this laptop to them and it's got bloatware and all kinds of programs they don't need so I'm thinking it'd be best to start from scratch.

I don't have an XP Home (32bit...not sure if there was a 64bit in this version of XP) disc, otherwise I'd use it to load the OS and use the COA on the laptop to activate and hopefully all would be well.

So, I'm lookin on eBay which is the only place I know of to buy this and my question is... can I use an upgrade disc to do a complete install on a freshly formatted hard drive, or do I need to get a full version?

I thought I heard somewhere that you could actually do a full install with the upgrade version, but I may be thinking of Win 7, or I may have just heard that in a dream one night after trying to help someone with their computer (I'm not expert, but I like to tinker with this stuff and I continually run in to people that want me to tinker with their computer and I usually recommend starting all over and teach them to use Acronis.)

Also, is there somewhere that you can download Win XP Home in an ISO file so I can burn my own DVD since I may only ever use this once?

Any tips would be appreciated as this person can only pay with a "thank you" so it's one of those no budget deals.

 

No, you cannot install an upgrade for a full installation of xp. 64 bit was only supplied to OEM, It would be better to find a friend who has a home cd, and install it with the product key of the laptop.

have you checked for a restore partition?

you can look on line for a users manual, which if it has a restore partition, how to access it.

you need the make, model and model number of laptop.

This is an old thread, have you had a solution already?

 

Back up your files before you do anything man!

 

Another solution is to NOT re-format the drive and NOT to re-install Windows. I don't know how to do this but it is possible with laptops which are pre-installed with Windows. There should be a method of resetting the laptop and its pre-installed Windows to the default configurations.

When bought, most laptops which are pre-installed with Windows, include rescue discs. If those rescue discs are gone or missing, it is still possible to reset since a small portion of the hard drive is reserved which acts as a rescue disc media itself. So if you format your hard drive, it is possible that you might accidentally erase the contents of that reserved space.

Sorry but I don't know how to do this exactly, but a friend of mine did this method once on his own laptop and it worked. The speed is once again very fast. His own rescue discs are gone too by the way. After the resetting, the bloatwares are gone from the system, but their files are still there in the hard disk, so manual deletion of such was needed.

For the mean time you should bring the laptop to a service/repair center and let their technicians do the resetting for you. Then asks them how they did the resetting.

And let me add, if both the rescue discs are gone an the reserved hard disk space is damaged, then I think even the technicians will have a hard time resetting the laptop. So a full re-format of the hard drive and full re-install of Windows might be required, thus you should have a Windows installation CD. But who knows.