Sorry chaps got more info now,yer know what it's like trying to help someone over the phone the info is garbled,apparently the machine was defaulting to his dial up modem instead of his ethernet broadband,that's a different kettle of pigs altogether,because he loaded a new operating system he lost the drivers for the dial up,leastwise that's what I think,so the system is demanding the disk to look for said driver I suppose,might have a run up later and remove the modem from the machine altogether the lad is new to puters so it is a waste of time trying to help over the phone.
Apparently he still has thirty days to register his copy of XP Pro.
Thanks for the help anyway chaps.
