Good afternoon kenmiles and welcome to CH
If the info that truenorth is giving you is 100% correct but you may not be aware of these other XP features (The info below is just for your knowledge and if all else fails). Out of curiosity do you have any important items (like pictures, word documents etc) that you would want to save. Considering where you are I don't know if you have access too or can borrow a external hard drive or some kind of storage medium to do so. "Doing this is a just in case" Plus if you do have to do a complete re-install please keep in mind that a LOT of bandwidth will be needed to reinstall all service packs / hot fixes / security updates etc. Plus you need AV (either free or paid). These windows updates will depend on what service pack is installed can be in 100's to update the PC.
Now this is just in case you have to do a fresh install and not using a "restore point" (this can be done with out XP disks so long as the hidden partition is in place) On Some PC manufacture's like Dell, HP, Compaq etc have a small hidden partition to re-install the PC if nothing else works to start this will very from PC manufacture to manufacture.
Like a lot of Dell's during the boot of the PC you would see a "blue bar" up top and you would push and hold the "crtl" key keep on tapping the "F11" and just follow the prompts during the option boxes that come up just pick the one that states "restore pc to factory setting" it will tell you to make sure this is what you ant to do and to have a back up of all data.
For a lot of HP's when you turn on the PC and just after the HP logo appears keep on tapping the "F10" key and Select one of the following procedures, depending on which recovery type you want to perform:
To perform a standard system recovery, click Next , and then click Yes . (this one is for re-installing app's and fixing windows)
To perform a destructive recovery, click Advanced , (select Destructive Recovery ) and then click Next. The "destructive" is not as bad as you think but it will delete all your stuff and restore the PC to factory settings.
But just as truenorth pointed out the MS link will guide you thru the steps to "using restore points" this is a great feature if like say the PC was running OK like say a week ago or even further. Using this keep ALL your personal doc's, pic's etc in-place and not touched. Not to mention using this is a LOT quicker (time wise) and headache wise. If for some reason you do not have access to that web site please come back and let us know so we can put the needed info here for you.
What I am writing here looks and sounds worse than it really is. If you can give us the model of PC (i.e Dell Dimension E521 or a HP DV9000) we can help you in more detail if the link truenorth has given you is not available and if you need to do a fresh install or if you have any questions.
Please let us know if we can help or answer any more questions, Mike
