xp blowup, how to best recover???

hello, a buddy of mine had his xp computer blow up on him (not literally, but you know crash and scramble).
i did the repair option and got it loaded back up, and i copied all his files and settings from his prior good installation over to this new one (had to set up a new one to get repair to work).

now it looks like everything is there, but there are some issues with programs etc, but i have NOT yet downloaded all the xp updates yet. so my question is this:

do i keep trying to repair this install, or do i just back up his data and reload??

repair fixed windows, but basically installed a new copy...it won't let me switch to his prior user. so, where should i invest my time (and the least amount of it)???:confused:

Depends what caused the blow-up - if it was viral then I would go for the clean install option every time. You cannot use the old profiles, but you can take ownership and therefore get access to them read the how to here