I would like to wipe my compaq presario so its back to working at its best. I want it how it was when i first brought the laptop (about 1 year ago). I have a XP disk but when i try to wipe it with that it says i have no hardrive. So is there anyother way i can go about doing this? I do plan to get a new laptop for xmas, but im sick of my laptop not running to its best.

You should be using the recovery disks from Compaq. If you bought the computer new and never made those disks you may still be able to. Read your manual to learn how. If you use a retail WinXP CD you will need to use the key for that CD and you will need to install all the drivers for your hardware. The reason you got that error is because your computer probably has a SATA hard drive and WinXP doesn't have the necessary SATA drivers. You would also lose all the other programs that originally came with the computer. Make the disks or buy them from Compaq. Compaq is a division of HP (Hewlett Packard).

Check the Compaq site. You should have an image of your original system on the hard drive. It's normally in it's own partition. I think you can bring up a program to restore it using special keyboard keys during a boot.