How to Reformat and keep OS

[hondatool]

I need to reformat and keep the OS on a computer i'm lending a friend. I know how to reformat, but that takes the OS w/ it. Any help would be appreciated. It's a PC btw

[TylerB]

Depends, is it XP? You can do a system restore on XP.

[hondatool]

yea it is XP

[TylerB]

Does it have a recovery partition? Or do you have the XP disk?

[TylerB]

I'll explain both.

To recover with a Partition. Usually the partition is labeled a D:/, so shut off your PC and turn it on, as it's starting it will ask do you want to start Windows XP Home on C:/ or Windows XP Home Recovery on D:/, select Recovery and it takes you into the recovery wizard.

With a Windows XP disk.
Turn off your PC, turn it on watch for it to say 'Press <F2, F8, Shift+F2> to enter boot options menu'. Once you get into the boot menu, change the primary boot option from A:/ to your cd rom, usually E:/ or F:/ then put the XP disk in that drive and restart, it will then take you to the XP install prompt. There should be a recovery option in there.

This is all off memory, so I hope it's right.

[hondatool]

cool man, i'll be doing it later this week so i'll let you know..thanks for the info