Compaq Presario 5000... Last Call

OK.
I have a Compaq Presario 5000 that originally had "factory" installed HDD. That HDD went belly up and so now I am working with a clean slate and have only a Compaq Recovery CD and (obviously) I am not getting anywhere with it.

I thought that I had seen information on how to use a Recovery CD on a new HDD or am I at a point of buying a WinXP CD and installing that instead.

Anyone... thks

 

I don't suppose there are any README files on the recovery CD?

Generally recovery CD's have an iso image of the HD but what yours contains is a moot point.

 

Compaq recovery CD's usually don't have any options but to completely reformat the HD into 2 partitions. One 80% of total space and the second 20% as a recovery partition. Then they load the OS.

All you do is put the disk in Cd drive and restart the computer. Make sure your BIOS is set to "boot from CD first" and be sure to hit a key when asked if you want to boot from CD. The rest should be automatic.