Way back when I bought this machine I put the discs in to make the Recovery & System discs,however I ended up needing a ne motherboard a while back & these discs dont seem to fit the computer any longer.
Can I still use these to re-format or not ?

If you put that in English m8 I might understand it...

I don't know in other words.

All the info is stored on the HD, the motherboard shouldn't make a blind bit of difference. That is unless the recovery process is programmed to look for a specific type of setup.

I put the recovery disc in & it didnt gimme the option to boot up & format ao Im assuming it wont work now that factory settings/hardware aint there
In the system disc is a folder called os,im kinda thinkin thats the windows xp so I could format & install from there

One thing that occurred to me that may be worth checking is the order of the drives being accessed on bootload. If I remember correctly if the Hard disc is accessed before the drive with the recovery disk in it will never boot from the CD. This may have been changed in the default settings when your motherboard was installed. I can't remember exactly where they are somewhere in the bios I think. Sorry I haven't got time to research it for you now.

Cheers mate,I shall investigate that now

If its a HP it prolly wont work either, HP Tattoo there motherboards so recovery CD's only work with there boards. It sounds more like a boot order problem its going straight to the hardrive.