Since Fry's own the brand-name, it's THEIR problem. Do you actually know who the manufacturer is? If so, you could try contacting them direct, and see if they are prepared to sell you a set of disks.
Is there a utility in the machine to create the disks? what does the manual say about a recovery partition? Did you wipe that when you upgraded to Vista?
A machine which came with XP is likely to be rather long in the tooth by now in PC terms - unless it's a netbook - and it's not realistic to expect people to keep parts forever.
You could try using an ordinary OEM System Builder XP disk (of at least the same SP as the Key on your COA sticker) together with your COAsticker Key to reinstall XP - but then you'd have to install all the drivers and suchlike, which may take a fair amount
of netcrawling. If you have a Retail XPSP3 disk, you could install that using the default KEy, nad then change the product Key to your own COA key, usin ghte Product Key Update tool.
That's as much as I think anyone can say in this forum - which is for Activation and Validation problems, not for general hardware/software problems.
You could try posting in the Windows XP Repair Answers forum - they may be able to give you some specific advice. (make sure that you quote all relevant computer details such as the full Model Number)
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xprepair/threads/
Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi |
CrashFixPC |
The Three-toed Sloth
