[mikester]

It isn't difficult, it's just different.

What does the disk you have say it is? My wife's Dell disk was simply an OEM XP installation disc so it wouldn't make it like was when delivered but it would reinstall XP. Boot the system up and see if you can take a look at the disc's contents to see what it is. If it is the XP reinstall disc then run the setup from there and it will get your process going for you. When it reboots the system it will come up in the XP installation process and I *THINK* you will have the opportunity to delete the current partition and create a new one which will for most folks clean the system enough. Then it will reinstall XP and you've effectively started over.

If it doesn't, again - get into the BIOS which is the computer's Basic input output system. This is the firmware that gets everything started before the OS boots, Macs have them too there just aren't any options to be configured in them. So, anyway - get into that and you should be able to find the boot order option. Also some XP install discs boot from them but expect a keyboard input to confirm that you actually want to boot from them. No input and it passes things back to the hard drive.

That input usually looks something like this

"press any key to boot from CD..." The trailing dots appear on per second for 3 seconds. If there is no input then it boots normally to the hd.

Best of luck.