Need to do repair on Windows XP Home

[SearchMaster]

A friend of mine had some nasty viruses/malware and asked for my help. I used the Malware Removal kit that Schadenfroh posted here.

Unfortunately his PC was pretty infected and apparently hit some system files, so his computer will only now boot in safe mode (it hangs after you click a user when booting up normally).

While I don't think there's much chance of bringing his computer back to life without reformatting, I would at least like to try to use the Windows repair console to see if it will help. However, his computer is XP Home and I only have a disk for XP Professional personally. He is going to check and see if he has his original OS disk but his computer is a Dell and probably only has a system restore disk.

Can I use my XP Professional CD to do a repair on his XP Home system?

 

[Canterwood]

I would imagine you could run the repair, but would not be able to use the XP Home cd key when requested.
You'd probably have to use a Pro key and end up with XP Pro on the box.

 

[RebateMonger]

Most Dells have a Dell System Restore partition on the hard drive that will restore the PC to its factory configuration. Ctrl-F11 during the boot process should start the process. This will reformat the drive and you'll lose all data.

Dell will normally send an XP Home Install CD (XP only, suitable for a Repair Install or a complete install), along with a Driver CD, upon request by the owner of the PC. It usually takes a couple of days to get the disks. If you do a Repair Install, you shouldn't lose installed applications or data, but will have to re-install all Service Packs and Updates that aren't on the XP Install CD.

Yeah, you can likely get into the Recovery Console with your XP Pro CD, if that's all you need.

Before using any of these procedures, any important data should be backed up to another hard drive.