Reinstall XP from hard drive...?

[KasinoKing]

OK I've wasted well over an hour of my life searching for this info on the web to no avail.
I did see somewhere this can be done, but no explanation how!
I know there's some very clever people at this forum, so no harm asking:

I have an old-ish laptop which is so full of crap it runs like an old dog.
I have copied off all my files & programs, and now I want to just wipe the hard drive totally clean & start again.
But I have lost the original Windows XP Home disc... (stupid, I know!)

Does anyone know how to re-install XP direct from the hard drive?
(Idiots guide required - not too much technical jargon!)

Thanks in advance for any help!
KK

[maxd]

Hmm, that's a good question. I've reinstalled XP many times but never tried to do using the XP installation itself, always used master disks or install images (see below). If you find out how to do it let us know!

FWIW, I'd strongly suggest that once you've solved your problem and reinstalled XP in the machine, grab an image of your drive using something like Acronis True Image or any other disk image maker, burn it off onto CD.

That way you can simply copy over your clean installation image if you need to do this again instead of having to go through the reinstall hassle. I realize this doesn't help you now but it's an easy thing to do that can avoid mucho headaches in the future. The only trick is you need to keep those discs on file for some indefinite point in time in the future.

[KasinoKing]

Panic's over... I hope!

After 30 minutes of trawling through old junk (which MIGHT be useful one day... ) in my attic I finally found the original disk as supplied with the laptop.
Hopefully I can do it using the disk - if not, I'll be back!

Thanks to everyone who answered (some by PM)

KK

[same_old]

If that fails mate I have at least 4 copies of xp that havent been loaded up I can give you a serial code for.
Got a few friends in the IT business.