Illegal XP issues assistance required please

[CAPTAIN18]

Hi Guys I need your help with a problem. I purchased a pc for my father last year which it turns out had an illegal copy of xp pro installed ( no disk) he has been using it for storing all his photos on . I visited him recently and looked at his pc i wanted to install a new version of norton anti virus so uninstalled the old version ( this was blocking auto updates from MS) when i did this the windows updated and deleted all the windows software without warning. we can only boot up the pc now but cant run anything and we dont want to lose all these family photos. we are quite happy to purchase the genuine software and would have done this if known in the first place. please can you offer any assistance as i dont know how to proceed without losing the photos.

kind regards

[Miz]

Once you get a copy of XP, follow the instructions on this page. Those instructions were copied from the Microsoft site, I just can't find the original Microsoft page.

If you plan to do it that way (you won't lose any data), remember that you have to buy a copy of XP Pro. If you buy XP Home, its product key won't work with the XP Pro that's already installed.