you can use the free paragon soft : http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/download.html
Registry restore
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/307545
Note you could probably do this with the drive in a disk caddy and attached to another computer and use Windows Explorer.
The lower XP option (the old install?) gives me a clear blue screen with the arrow cursor, nothing else.
Wiping the drive with a fresh install of XP was a mistake?
I rebooted without the CD. Â There are two XP options to boot into. Â The top one, presumably the one I just loaded, gives me a clean XP install, all working as a fresh install.
The lower XP option (the old install?) gives me a clear blue screen with the arrow cursor, nothing else.
Meaning that the original OS is not XP pro. But when I boot up, there are two options for me, and they are both "Windows XP Pro".
Probably two XP pro versions one with and one without SP updates.I booted into the old version, safe mode, and it says it is SP2.
If so, can you detect any hard drives?