Compaq Presario SR1800NX need help recovering

I just dont want to pay for a disk, its stupid when they could just give me the ISO and I can burn it, but I will if I have to. Can I just use an XP disk to recovery the install and see if its boots? That's what I'm trying now. Isn't there anyway to use the recovery console to you know "recover?" seems kinda useless otherwise.

You can do a Repair installation when you go to setup off the disk.

When I hit repair it brings me to recovery console wtf?

Edit: NM forgot you have to go farther into the setup to do the proper repair, which is strange because It always makes me feel like Im starting to reformat it instead.

Ok I might of screwed up or something I dunno I'm so confused, after the repair it said it didnt install XP, which I didnt want it to I wanted to repair so it rebooted and seem like it was booting, but then it said it was install Win XP, is this right should I have continued? I shut it off thinking it might whip the harddrive, I also discovered there is a recovery option and for some reason the stupid keyboard has F key lock on it so I wasn't able to get it till now im trying to restore using this I just hope this isnt a whip either.

I have the same model Presario and recently did a destructive recovery off the recovery partition and it wipes out all personal files and recovers it to factory status. you will have to download all of the updates, vid card driver, etc. and is a lengthy process, but it works and does not require an XP disk.

Best answer selected by Bakuryu42.