Windows XP Reinstallation of XP

[Bill Meppiel]

I bought a laptop from an estate sale which has XP as the OS. But it appears that it must have been a corporate machine and there are a number of administrative restrains present. I am thinking that a complete fresh reinstall of XP is the best solution.
So my question is, being that I bought the machine legitimately, would I not be able to reinstall XP without having to purchase the XP disK?

So I am open to any suggestions of how I can obtain an XP full installation without having to pay the price for it.

 

[Josephur]

If it contains a Volume License Activation Key you may not be entitled to actually own the license. Does it have an XP sticker on it with a serial number? If it's a brand name computer you might be able to use that information along with an OEM installation media disk to reset it to its factory glory. If your a local administrator on the machine then I would suggest removing it from a domain if it's part of one to loosen up the Group Policy settings that are probably linked to its domain membership. You can always use a password reset program such as Offline NT Password Editor or the easier to use software by Lazesoft to reset the local Administrator account which would give you access to remove it from the domain.