I searched around here and Google but most of what I found seems to be beyond what I need to do. I came across the mention of Nlite to make a clean XP disc. What I need to know is if I can strip a clean XP Home installation from a Dell oem cd. I have a HP machine that the operating system seems to be screwed up on. It has a blue screen. I have no disc for the HP. I have a valid code to use if I can come up with a clean install and I think I can download the drivers I will need from HP. So Will Nlite work for me or must I find another option. Thanks for any info.

... What I need to know is if I can strip a clean XP Home installation from a Dell oem cd...

... I have no disc for the HP...

So what do you have?

@admin: *please move to nLite-forums*

Yes it is possible (done it).

The tricky part is the fact your original cd is probably "preactivated" for Dell computers, if you want to keep that feature you need to replace the oem files (google for oembios to get the list, there are 7 of them I think,) by those from HP (you can pick them up from your running system and repack them) and use the product key from the Dell cd, not from your sticker. The key you need to use is in an answer file somewhere on the cd.

Good luck.

Sorry for posting in the wrong forum. What I have is a HP computer with XP Home that boots to a blue stop screen. I don't have the original disc for it. I do have a disc with XP Home service pack 2 but it is for a dell.

I don't really need to keep it preactivated. I would like to keep it as simple as possible. If I could just get a clean copy of Windows to do a fresh install on the system then do updates and download needed drivers from HP I would be happy.

Are you sure your Blus Screen is not hardware induced ?

Keeping it preactivated is more simple, as that is what the disc is made for. Changing the nature of the disc is a bit of an other subject and involves editig files as well.