XP - lost pw & need full reinstall

[joycefitz]

Help.....my daughter added a password to the administrator account of the kids game laptop and she forgot the password. This HP had been out of commission for a couple years and then brought back to life when HP replaced the video cards during a class action suit.

 

It runs rather slow probably due to spyware and game cookies from wherever kids go on the internet.

 

I don't have the CD to reinstall the XP Home edition but I have the product key from the bottom of the laptop.

 

I want to reinstall XP -- can I get a download from somewhere? How do I wipe the computer and drive completely clean to get a cleaned up from any spyware? How can I do this without administrator rights?

 

If I can't get a new copy of XP, do you think Vista would run on this 5 year old machine -- HP pavilion zd7000A Pentium 4 3.19 GHz 512 RAM?

 

Pls help ......

 

Joyce

[RandyL]

I'm sorry joyce but we can't offer advice on getting around the password or help with "downloading" XP.

 

I looked up your model and it seems it shipped with the recovery disk. It looks like the recovery media is no longer available for purchase from HP. It also seems there is no option to reinstall from a seperate partition on your hard drive.

 

Your best bet is to purchase XP. A 5 year old laptop is extremely unlikely to meet system specs for Vista and HP support agrees.