Having a nightmare

[shane luff]

hi im trying to restore my travelmate 290 runing xp home edition back to factory defalt with out a cd, can anyone help.

 

[Saga Lout]

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

Unless it has a message on the first black screen you see that tells you which Function key to press to restore to factory defaults, and unless there's a Partition on the hard disk with all the necessary files, I'm afraid to say it probably isn't possible.

Apart from buying a genuine XP CD (Microsoft is the safest bet for that) or whinging the manufacturer into giving you one, your best shot is to use a free Linux operating system to make the best of the machine. Try PCLinuxOS from http://www.pclinuxos.com.