Can I use any XP disk to repair a friends xp?

[normsta]

Basically a friend of mine has got an issue with his pc, he only gets as far as the black screen with Windows XP Professional and then a dialog box appears saying something about a password?

It then reboots and this is all he gets, he has lost his discs that came with the system its an HP Compaq thats all I know.

 

[EXCellR8]

You should be able to repair it with an OEM disk if it's XP Professional, service pack typically doesn't matter. You might be able to do something else if the hard drive has a "recovery" partition but I'm not sure how you would go about doing that. Try the regular XP repair install and see where that gets you; then post back.

 

[normsta]

He doesn't have any XP discs but I have got XP with SP2 without a key would I be able to use it to repair it?