I don't have an installation CD for Windows XP - what if I need one?

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I want a windows XP CD-ROM for free
my address is
[personal information removed]

That would not be legal. You'll need to purchase one.

I have the XP sp2 installation CD and when Windows file protection asks for it I insert the CD. WFP then copies one file and the asks for the CD again and will not copy anymore files until I eject and reinsert the CD. I copied the I386 folder to C:/ and changed the source paths in the usual registry keys and WFP still asks for the CD. There is nothing in the WFP dialog box asking for the CD that allows one to change the directory. Clicking "retry" changes nothing. I used "cleanhandlers" to fix any corruption of handlers, the drive letter is right as I said it copies one file or as many times as I care to eject and reinsert the CD. I used msconfig to copy the sfc.exe, sfc_os.dll and sfc.dll to the system32 folder with no change. I have also tried from the cmd prompt, purge, revert, scanonce, etc... other than that the system appears to be running smooth.

so this is a helpfull explanation except for the fact that it doesn't explain what to do if you don't have the cd image on your computer. my computer was given to me by my school and it doesn't have a cd or the cd image. how can i get arround this?

You can't. You need to get a CD.

my "insert cd" message only has re-try and cancel. i have no option to type the path to i386. now what? (:

Usually it pops up after you hit cancel.

I put 1386 in my "search" and it came up empty though I saw as it was searching C:\1386. I know it is on my PC but I can't bring it up using the search tool. I can, however, bring up both winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. Would there be an explanation for this?

Looks like you typed in 1386 in the comment here - it's I386 - that's the letter "I" followed by 386.

Definitely I typed in the "number 1" ... thank you. After putting in the capital "I" the files came up and there were quite a few, many pertaining to "reinstall" though I don't remember reinstalling. But then, I don't recall what I ate for breakfast many a day :-)

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