Okay, hopefully I'm in the right area. I have a Compaq Presario 6312us Desktop. It had WinXP Home on it. The Hard-drive is fried. No WinXP Home disk to reinstall operating system. Where am I at? (outside of up a creek) am I looking at having to buy a new WinXP operating system or is there a course of contacts and actions I can take to get a disk to reinstall XP on the new hard-drive (had problems over on HP website trying to find that answer). Thought maybe someone over here may know the loops and hoops to run through so I don't start something that is futile tomorrow and waste a lot of time and keep the blood pressure down :-). THX.

Your situation is quite a tricky one, there are some solutions you can take...

1 See if Compaq gave you a emergency recovery CD.
2 Pay an extortionate amount of money for a replacement CD
3 Contact Compaq and explain your situation, they might send you a replacement
4 If you have the license key, you can purchase a XP media CD.
5 Some computer repair shops do have the authority to install XP on your system
6 Reformat and try a Linux distribution

Hope this helps

COntact hp directly to order the restore disks or find a local shop that is an HP partner. The recovery disks normally cost 20 to 30 dollars.

Yep, less than $20 for the last 3 that I ordered. Took about 4 days to get to me and they worked like a charm!

Usasma, oldf@rt (goodone), and nigglesnush85: I thank all of you for your replys and I will be contacting them in the morning. Dang you guys are good :-). I will follow up with my findings to confirm the results to others. Again THX.

Well I contacted HP and gave them all my information and etc. I was told they do not have and are not making and more disc. for my machine and proceeded to try and sell me a new tower for $399.00. I told them there was nothing wrong with the one I have, it works just fine for me. I was just looking at getting a disk to replace the operating system and restore what I lost, reference drivers. No dice, no longer available. So looks like I have to go buy a Operating System and find the drivers, which I don't think the drivers will be to hard to find but the OS will COST!. Never again with these propitiatory systems. NEVER!

I think at some point all of us have learned that lesson.

Check with the local computer repair places, if they are HP partners, they may still have the HP/Compaq recovery Library(Large binders, with loads of recovery cd/dvd sets) they may still have yours, and be able to duplicate one for your system

Okay we will try that route but I live two weeks from anywhere so it will be a week or so no doubt :-) but sure appreciate the info. THX.