If it is an IDE drive ( big large flat cable ...

), and if it is the only drive on that cable, set the jumper to master and connect the end connector to the drive.
If you have an XP disk, just boot up, hit del, go into Bios and set it to boot from CD. Reboot, cd will take over the system, accept the install, format the drive as NTFS and so on ...
I never use recovery disk... sorry.
If SATA, pay somebody.
