Screen Seven finally shows verbiage that's not recycled from the generic XP setup, but is specific to our Repair task. Setup should find your damaged copy of XP and present it for repair, as shown:

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Screen Seven At long last, Setup begins to refer to a Repair option. Here, Setup should have found your damaged XP setup, which you can select and then press R to start the nondestructive repair.

If your damaged copy of XP isn't highlighted in the list box, highlight it now. When it's selected, press R to start the repair process.

The Repair process then selectively deletes system files in the \Windows folder and subfolders and copies undamaged replacement files from the setup CD to their proper locations.

Screen Eight The Repair operation replaces all potentially damaged system files with fresh copies from the CD. (click image for larger view)

The Repair process then works on the current setup's Registry, leaving much of it intact and rebuilding the rest.

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Screen Nine There's no fanfare, but this is one of the nicer parts of the Repair process: Setup retains what it can in the current Registry so that already-installed hardware and software will remain installed.

The system then needs to reboot and will do so automatically. If your setup CD is still in the drive, remove it so that the system won't try to boot from it.

Screen Ten With the system files freshly copied and the Registry ready for rebuilding, the system needs to reboot. Remove the CD from the drive so that the PC will boot to the hard drive instead of to the CD. (click image for larger view)

The first Repair reboot will take longer than normal. Don't be alarmed. Also, don't be alarmed when Setup resumes. Once again, it will appear that you're performing a full, from-scratch setup; there's nothing on-screen to indicate that you're repairing an existing version of XP. But although the setup screens are the same as what you'd see in a full install, it's still a repair process, as will become clearer in a moment.

The first two of the Repair setup screens ask for your language preferences and product key. Enter these normally.

	Screen Eleven (click image for larger view)		Screen Twelve (click image for larger view)
	When Setup resumes, it will appear that you're performing a full, from-scratch setup. But don't worry--you're still indeed repairing your existing version of XP.