Complicated Windows XP Home installation issue

Here's what happened:

My friend bought a cheap Hewlett Packard computer about a year and a half ago. It didn't come with a Recovery CD; instead, there's a hidden partition on the hard drive that has the original, factory settings and data of the computer.

Recently, his original hard drive crashed, so he bought a new hard drive. The problem, of course, is that he has no way of getting Windows XP Home Edition back. He did recently get a Recovery CD from HP, but the CD doesn't work; when he boots from the Recovery CD, it goes to the blue setup screen but then gives an error: "Setup cannot find the End-User License Agreement (EULA). Setup will not continue."

Here are my questions:

1.) Is there any way to bypass that EULA error? I found one answer on Microsoft's Knowledge Base site, but that page says this: "When you try to install Windows XP on a hard disk that is formatted with the FAT32 file system, you may receive the following error message." That can't be the problem with his Recovery CD, because we're trying to install it on a completely blank hard drive with absolutely no partitions; there is no FAT32 file system on that hard drive.

2.) If there's no way to fix that Recovery CD problem, is it possible to use another Windows XP Home Edition CD to install Windows XP on that new hard drive, and then use the Windows XP Product Key from his HP computer (his computer has the Windows XP Product Key on the side of it, on a small sticker)?

Thanks for any answers or guidance.

 

It is possible, if you can get your hands on an OEM XP Home CD. It will not work with a Retail CD, AFAIK, if its an OEM CD Key (which is what HP will buy in bulk, rather than individual disks... saves on money). Its perfectly legal to use someone elses disk. But dont take that to think its legal to dow and download it.

A real XP home disk should walk you through formatting the drive before it starts to isntall windows.

 

Thanks for the reply.

Eh. I have a full retail version of Windows XP Home Edition myself, but I don't know anybody right off the top of my head that has an OEM version.

Well, let me ask you this: does it matter if the OEM version is from HP or not? I might be able to find someone with an OEM version, but it'll likely not be an HP version.

 

It shouldnt matter who bought the OEM, you could try using the Full retail CD, but I have a feeling that it wont like the OEM cd key.

If you can, dont get one thats been branded by another manufacturer. Its a common misconception that OEM disks are just disks that have got the manufacturers software on it but this is NOT SO. Its just like buying anything OEM, it just means you have no tech support and a very limited warantee, if any, the idea being the company that made the PC gives the tech support.

Anyway, i find a lot of people who buy software online inadvertantly buy software OEM by accident because it "looked cheaper", so you may find that some people have it without knowing.