I've been having several but minor problems with my XP that tend to make me suspect corrupt system files.

So I thought I would boot with the XP disk in my CDROM drive and tell it to "Repair." A logical minimalist first step it seemed.

But here is what resulted.

After setup had loaded a host of files from the CD it said "Setup is starting Windows."

1. To setup XP now, press ENTER.
2. To repair an XP installation using Recovery Console, Press R
3. To quit Setup without installing XP, press F3.

Well, 2 and 3 were out, so I hit ENTER. (I didn't want to use the recovery console just yet nor did I want to quit.)

Then the next screen said:

The following list shows existing partitions and unpartitioned space on this computer.

1. To setup XP, press ENTER.
2. To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C.
3. To delete selected partition, press D.

There followed in a little box this:

Unknown disk
(There is no disk in this drive)
38202 mb Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi (MBR1)

Below this, there was, also boxed in, what I have typed below.

C: Partition 1 (NTFS) 32801 MB (31107 MB free). But my HD is 40 gb. Huh?

BUT THERE WAS A DISK IN MY CDROM. And obviously I have my HD. ???

I had thought my HD was not partitioned since I bought my computer ready to go. But perhaps I was wrong. I figured I could likely back out if I hit ENTER and didn't want to go farther. so I did that--hit ENTER.

The next screen announced:

You chose to install XP on a partition that contains another O/S. (Huh? I've only had the XP O/S.) Installing on this partition might cause this other O/S to function improperly.

To continue setup, hit C.To select a different partition, hit ESC.

Here I chose to back out and write this letter.

Can someone throw some light on what this all means. l I mean I expected a "Repair" button or provision to choose or select.

Did I make incorrect choices--where's the "Repair" function?

What can I do? What should I do?