hi,
if your friend doesn't know his xp key, then he can slave the drive to another computer, and run 'Magical Jelly Bean', and point the app to look in the windows folder of the slave drive (his drive), and it will find the key, then you can copy it and keep it safe.
http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml
if he gets xp up and running, then use 'belarc advisor' which will list a profile of his pc, and also includes the installed windows key. he can keep a log file for future ref.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
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