Reformatting without OS disk

A friend wants to donate an old work computer to charity, but obviously wants to remove everything but the OS before doing so. He no longer has the XP disk, and I could swear there's a way to do that, but I can't remember. It's possible I was in the alternate universe when I read somewhere you could...but I figured someone here would know if there is.

 

The only way to do what you are referring to is a recovery partition. The recovery partition is sometimes installed by the computer's manufacturer, and does the same task a windows XP recovery disk would. Look in "my computer" for the recovery partition. If it exists, your computer should say something like "press F11 to enter recovery" when you start your computer.

If you do not have a recovery partition installed, there is no way to do what you want that I know of. You could technically use someone's OEM XP disk if the computer you are installing it on has a Windows XP key.

 

Must've been the alternate universe. Figures. Thanks for helping! :-D

 

You could download and burn The Ultimate Boot CD. I believe that will do what you want.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

http://majorgeeks.com/Ultimate_Boot_CD_d4981.html