I messed up my windows XP set-up by installing Mandrake 8.2 (which I don't know the root password for, but that's another story...) and I did a full reinstall because I couldn't find the option for a repair reinstall. The repair reinstall would save me at least 2 hours of reinstalling applications, can someone please tell me how to get a recovery install on Windows XP (I'm using professional edition, BTW).

Thank you!

in every windows so far, there has never been a repair option, somehow i dont think they will start now. One way of having a 'repair' would be to once you have installed all your main apps, create a new partition of your drive and copy everything across from windows. that way, should something go wrong you can just copy it all back again. I don't know if windows will let you do that though.

Never mind, Windows XP does have a repair option, I've used it. Unforutately I found out I messed up my install beyond repair (pun intended).