Old XP system. No recovery disks or factory restore available.

Alright guys, so i'm trying to fix my Dad n' laws PC here.

This darn thing is so loaded down with crud that I finally got tired of fighting with it and waiting a half hour for the start screen to load, and decided to just wipe this thing clean and start over for him.
Not even regular system restore can save this thing.

Problem is, he's had this thing for a while, and he's lost the recovery CD's that went with it a long time ago.
F9'd at boot to see if it had some sort of built-in recovery partition.. but no luck.
Not even a 'factory restore' option or anything.

I've been looking everywhere for some sort of recovery disks I could download to get this thing back to its original condition, but no luck so far.

Its a Dell Dimension 2400
Windows XP home edition

So far, the only advice i've found is to go directly to the dell website, and buy the recovery disks again. ...i'm trying to avoid that expense and time-consuming process if possible.