Reformating XP (and maybe vista)

A couple of friends have requested that I reformat their computers for them and I told them that I would be happy to. My only concern is that they may not have their windows disks! If that would be the case is there an alternate solution? I understand that many computers have a recovery drive and/or disk, however I have yet to examine the PC's so I'm unsure if this is the case here or not.

Thanks for your time,
Axis :major

 

If they do not have the Windows install discs, then you'd have to check for recovery partitions. HP and Compaq commonly had these on many of the PC's sold since 2004/5. Just be sure to download all the needed drivers and burn 'em to a CD before you format any drives. This way you know for sure you'll be able to get things up and running again. If you don't have CDs or a recovery partition, look for a folder named i386. If it's there, you may be able to burn it to a CD and use that to install WindowsXP; Vista is totally different. It's kind of a process to load XP that way, but if it's all you have, then it will have to work. Let us know how it goes. If you need to know how to use the i386 folder, let us know and we'll go from there.... good luck!

 

Thank you for your response however as I mentioned I have yet to see the computers so I do not know if they have recovery partitions on them or not.