Ok, I need some help.

One of my friends brothers Packard Bell iMedia 1817 got a corrupt windows file so i was asked to fix it, i had a look and from what i could see, the windows was pretty much stuffed.

They got no recovery disk with the computer, Ive tryed formatting and reinstalling windows with the machines Windows XP Home edition COA and my windows xp home edition disk.

I go to activate it over the phone and get told by the computer generated voice that there is a ID Error, and it tells me to press 1 to talk to a customer representative. Witch I dont want to do.

From what i can see, on the top of the machine it says 40GB HDD (1.5 GB For recovery)

I would like to know how to access this hidden partition so i can restore the computer from factory standard.

Any idea's on how to get access and how to use this partition to restore the computer.




Thanks
jesso568667