I have a Computer with a XP home edition product code but do not have the program install disks where can someone get download copies of XP home edition?

Answer 1

The scenario that seems most common is a manufacturer that pre-installs Windows XP for you and then does not give you a CD to go with it. I think this is a bad practice but I understand that it may save the manufacturer and ultimately you a little bit of money.

Hopefully what that manufacturer has done is copy the Windows XP CD-ROM image to your hard disk. Hard disks are so big these days that doing so takes up very little room and has some advantages I'll talk about in a second.

To find out if the CD-ROM image is on your machine, search for a folder named I386. There may be several but the one we care about will contain close to 7,000 files, two of which will be winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. The I386 directory is typically one of the top-level directories on the distribution CD-ROM but most importantly it is the directory that contains the distributed copy of Windows XP. Winnt.exe and winnt32.exe are the DOS and protected mode setup programs, respectively. (You'd only need those if you were planning to re-install Windows XP from scratch - I use them here as an easy way to indentify that we have the right directory.)

So now that you know you have the CD-ROM image, what if some later installation asks for the CD-ROM?

Not to worry, it's actually pretty simple. Typically the "Insert CD" message has only an OK and Cancel button. Press OK, allowing it to fail. The next dialog will typically ask you to provide the location of the CD-ROM; just type in the full path of the I386 directory you discovered above.

That's it. But it gets better.

Windows remembers. Now that you've told Windows where your installation CD image is it'll remember that. The next time you're in a situation that might require your installation CD Windows will look there first; if it finds what it needs then it won't bother to ask you for it.

All this information was found on http://ask-Leo.com/i_dont_have_an_installation_cd_for_windows_xp_what_if_i_need_one.HTML and is not my work. I take no credit for it.

From my own personal experience you could always borrow a friends install disk or go down to a custom computer shop as they usually have spare disks lying around (this is how i got my disk when i lost it). Also im pretty sure that if you called Microsoft and requested a replacement CD they would mail it (maybe with a small fee) but seeing as yourusing your old key it would be fairly cheap. Hope that helped.