I am trying to help a friend with his laptop. Compaq Presario V2000.

The laptop came with XP Home. My friend also installed Windows Vista without getting rid of the XP Opp System. He failed to realize that when he tried to register Vista, that he had already registered it on another computer so of course, Microsoft shut down both computers.

Now, I can't get to any recovery partition.

I would like to just nuke the laptop, wipe it clean, and re-install XP Home from the original disc.

Can anyone tell me how to do this? I have the XP Disc.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

Boot to your XP disc and follow the on screen instructions from there.

OK. Here is my issue. I can't get the laptop to start in anything but safe mode because of the Vista Duplicate Registration. When I put the cd in, it will not give me the option to Install Windows XP.

The only options that show are perform additional tasks or check system compatibility. The Install Windows XP is not available.

How can I wipe out the Vista Operating System, from safe mode, so I can try the XP Disc again?

HELP!!

What Curlyben meant was turn the computer OFF. Put the CD into the drive and turn it ON. At startup, if it asks you to hit F12 or something like this for a Boot Menu then do so. Select the boot to CD-ROM option. Then when the computer starts up, it will tell you to press any key to boot to the CD-ROM. Hit the enter key and continue on.

You will now run the Windows XP installation directly from the CD-ROM without first starting up the operating system. Continue with the installation and create a new installation. Do not Repair an existing installation.