After a minute or two, you'll see the "Windows Setup/Setup is starting Windows" screen, shown in Screen Three. Don't be alarmed: It's still just the setup process running, and nothing's been changed on your PC yet.

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Screen Three The "Starting Windows" screen is a bit of an overstatement; it's just the setup process getting going. Windows, as we normally think of it, isn't running yet, and no changes have been made to your PC.

Soon after Screen Three, you'll be presented with the normal "Welcome to Setup" screen, as shown in Screen Four.

Screen Four The "Welcome to Setup" screen is poorly worded; the "Repair" option we want isn't the one explicitly offered here. In fact, the repair option we want isn't shown at all. See the text for full detail.

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The poorly worded options in Screen Four lead many users astray. The only mention of "Repair" here is "...repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console..." but that's not the no-reformat repair/reinstall we're seeking. (The Recovery Console Repair option is useful in its own right for fixing relatively minor problems with the operating system, and we fully explore it in the links listed above.)

The repair option we do want--a nondestructive, no-reformat reinstall--is actually hidden beneath the Setup option, "To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER."

So hit Enter, just as if you were setting up Windows afresh and from scratch.

The next screen, about licensing, gives no reassurances that you're on the right path for a nondestructive repair/reinstall--in fact, it's the same screen you see when you're setting XP up on a virgin hard drive. But this is only the first of many screens that the Repair option will borrow from a full-blown setup. Press F8 to accept the licensing terms and to go on.

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Screen Five The licensing screen gives no indication that this is a Repair and not a brand-new, from-scratch installation. But don't be alarmed. You're on the right track.

Next, the XP setup process will show another screen that you may recall from your initial setup of XP. It searches for "a previous version of Microsoft Windows." In our case, we're not replacing a previous version of Windows, but rather repairing the very same version that's on the setup CD--but that's OK; it's just another poorly worded screen.

Screen Six Our intent is to repair the same version of Windows as is on the setup CD, but another poorly worded screen makes it seem like you're upgrading a previous version of Windows or installing one anew. But don't let the bad wording alarm you; we're still on track for a nondestructive reinstall.

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