The PC has worked (its a friends) and I only have my set of software not the originals, which as I have explained wont boot it, apart from a xp home disk which in safe mode tells me the disk has XP pro installed, but my xp pro install wont boot the machine up I just get an error saying it needs the 'restore plus!' disk which given the bios has been set to default is perplexing
If I could wipe the disk I wouldn't be wasting my time typing here
I've got the disk in another machine now so hopefully I'll be able to reinstall XP pro once the disk has been wiped, thanks anyway.