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 replacement CD. It will cost you around $10. The latter is the cheaper or if not cheaper the more legal way of going about this.

You may want to search the bittorents for the restore cd image. Since you do have your windows key on your system it would be legal to use the downloaded image.

have got a copy of XP . . . . its a home edition that comes in a funky yellow
folder . . . .

is that whats useable??? and am i right in thinking its just a case of sticking the
XP disc into my laptop and restarting it??

would say im computer savi when it comes to running programs etc but am still
a fresher when it comes to sorting out a problem . . .

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.

mine was retarded and i had to tap F12 forever . . . . . took about 5 attempts to get it to work !!!

cheers for the help peeps is appriciated . . . any free anti virus software that ud recommend??

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

First off, compaq would not have shipped a laptop with the operating system and device drivers on seperate cds. That was always on of the bugbears about compaq; you needed their propritary restore cd which is a combination of operating system and compaq device specific drivers to properly repair any compaq pc, either laptop or desktop. Compaq restore cds say so on the label, so if the label doesn't say compaq restore cd, then it isn't. Also, if my forgettery (I'm too old to have a memory) is working for a change, compaq installation cds(dvds) had blue labels with white or red writing.

With regards the problems you are describing, I think it most likely that your laptop is suffering from a serious virus infestation, which will give all of the symptoms you describe, and reinstalling the operating system will be of little if any benfit.

My advice to you is to first get a decent anti-virus package, and yes, agv is one of the best freebies out there. Remember, with agv, you have to also installthe anti-spyware product seperately as well. Also, make sure your laptop is connected to the internet after installation and run the virus pattern file update.