HP Omnibook XP Home won't boot, recover, or repair install

[EDB]

I have a HP Omnibook VT6200, which came to me with problems starting up. Windows XP splash screen would show loading, then screen would go black, before Windows password prompt. She (the owner) had a BIOS password setup, which worked fine, but I cleared it, which caused problems resulting in me needing to contact HP for a BIOS password reset. That taken care of I tried to again boot... no go. Not in safe mode, not last known good, nada. Disabling auto start showed me that "winsrv" was not found, and gave me a clue on why it wasn't booting.

I found a link on MS site which pointed to an issue with TVMedia and SP2 and suggested a uninstall of SP2 w/ recovery console. Problem is, recovery install needs Admin password, and none of the ones she provided will work.

I decided to try a repair install, but have numerous issues with not being able to delete files, and finally not able to copy files into installation folder.

Suggestions?
Can I use my xp pro cd to do a repair install on her xp home comp, using her cdkey? Is there a way to access HP restore w/o her cd? How about me taking the HD out and connecting it to my comp? Do I need the admin password once its a slave drive?

[DynamicTech]

I have a suggestion: If you don't mind losing everything on the disk, use killdisk on it. It will completely wipe all the data from the drive.
http://www.killdisk.com