The floppy is also broken, and I'm in England, is there a email address, or order form behind the Genuine check? I found the 98 disk if it helps.

Win98 disk won't help. Those are dos based disk actually. Since you can still surf the net, might as well download a copy off the net, and burn it into a cd. It's illegal no doubt, but all you need is to fix the problem. You can search for "winxp rapidshare.com" in google. You'll landed with a lot of option. Go with the same type for your original copy. If you have a SP2, then download those with SP2. Don't get those with fancy add-on. Just the original will do.

No rescue desks out of America? I have internet in terms of parent's work laptop, and college's computers, can't download anything.

What's the difference between what I would have if I installed windows, the rescue disk, and what I could download?

If I asked my parents to get a professional, would they have any of the disks or things needed?

The professional didn't know much really, scandisk failed twice so he took it away to try.

If he re-installs windows, I'd keep the registery really clean. I've found with a lot of programs that I can install them, move the file, then uninstall them. Is this right to do for keeping registery clean and still letting the programs run? As far as I know, only things like Opera for http protocol, msn for msn, etc, need to be "attached" in that way, can everything else be "detached"?

Also, you mentioned restoring a reg file, what registery backup programs make a reg file?