OT: What is the best way to restore crashed xp

[joe at actionline.com]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 9:49 AM, <joe at actionline.com> wrote:
>> ... I need to find a fast and efficient way to get my nephew's
>> win-xp box restored to a working state ...

Lisa replied:
> This sounds like a virus. You might have tried to boot
> into Spybot Search and Destroy initially.

I did find an old widows XP install disk so I tried that (several times),
but ran painfully slow and locked up several times, so I suspected either
a memory or HD problem. Then I tried installing Linux and that installed
fine and worked for a while, but it also locked up at various stages.

So, I suspect either a memory or HD problem. So ...

1. How can I check the memory and HD integrity on his old box? (or what
else should I check?

2. How can I reformat the entire HD to try reinstalling again?

I also tried my widows XP install disk on one of my old computers that I
retrieved from the attic on which I had installed Linux.  The XP install
disk worked fine on that, but after it installed, I saw the "activation"
requirement shown in the screen capture at this link:

http://www.upquick.com/temp/activateXP.jpg

What's up with that?  More M$ BS I assume.