Call Compaq on their 800 number listed at
www.hp.com in the computer downloads section. You will find a section for "recovery disks" or similar up on the top left quadrant .
Have your computer serial number and other information on the lable on the bottom or back and approximately when you purchased it.
If not too old, they will sell you a set of recovery/restores disks for less than $30 including Federal Express two-day shipping. They only send the discs until their stock for that model number runs out. When gone, the are gone. They do not make more. But when available, this is not a bad deal.
Then you use this restore set to re-install Windows XP to the state it was in when you bought it. Once you have installed the disks, go to
www.microsoft.com and download all the Windows XP updates... there are 137 of them... then download Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3. Windows will download all the drivers and other updates.
Presto, you are done.
Otherwise, you will have to buy a new copy of Windows XP. The lowest cost I have seen this week is $84.00 on line. If you have to use this disk, you will need to download an install the full driver set for your model from the
www.hp.com website for Drivers and Downloads.
But you should have all these disks in storage awaiting such an exciting event as this.
