Donated Thinkpads-Reinstalling original OS

[robla64]

The high school where I teach has received a few dozen different Thinkpads in various states. Some are fully working while others may need to be combined to make a working machine.
The problem is that most of them had the hard drive completely wiped before they were donated, including the recovery partition.
The all have COAs (mostly XP Pro, but a few Vista) on the back.
At first we were tried putting Linux on a few, but they will be loaned out to teachers and students for general use and many people are not comfortable with that setup.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to reinstall windows on these machine using the existing license?
Thanks

[Neil]

Put an ad in our forums market place, and tell us what the models are and the OS on COA, and someone will likely be able to set you up with recovery disc sets. There is no need to activate Windows when installed from recovery media.

Another alternative would get to obtain a OEM XP installation disc, and use the key on the COA to activate.

[Cigarguy]

Download and install the OS that matches the COA.