The problem is that you made a hardware change and now windows sees your system as a different computer. You will more then likely have to call to activate it. Even if you do get to the web to do...

Try going into the security of the the c:\backup folder and taking ownership of the folder and have the rights to all child objects change.

Have you tried to activate it over the phone?

I personally use AVG, but have heard really good things about Avira too.

Did the XP disc come with the laptop? If so then yes that is the one you use. As long your bios is set to boot to the CD drive first then yes just stick the disk in and restart.

You have a couple of options here. You can get your hands on another copy of XP and use the driver CD's to get your system up and running, or you can contact HP and get them to ship you a...

That's because by default windows firewall blocks port 21 that FTP works on. It just happened that IE was the program you were using for the FTP. It would have alerted you to say Filezilla if you...