[geeks] WinXP CD help

[Dan Duncan]

I'm trying to restore a Dell laptop using the included Windows XP
"Reinstallation CD" but it's horribly scratched.  (This is actually
one of the CDs that is just WinXP without all the extraneous Dell crap
because I have used it before.)
The only other WinXP CDs I have access to are non-OEM XPPro versions
which will not take the product key on the sticker
on the laptop because it's an OEM reg code, not a "real" reg code and
also probably because it's Pro and not Home.  (Don't get me started)
I tried resurfacing the CD which helped some, but there are still 8 or
so files that won't read (one of them is driver.cab of course) and I'm
wondering if anyone has any tips on getting this installed.   Can I
consolidate working copies of the corrupted files from a non-OEM CD
and have them work with the remainder of the OEM CD?   If so, what's
the best way to do that?  I use Windows as rarely as possible so I'm
not really sure how to re-master a working bootable CD from the other
two.  NT allows booting the CD to a command prompt and I can run
setup.exe from inside an existing directory on the drive that has all
the source files.  Is there a way to do that from XP?

-- 
Dan Duncan