Topic: original cd`s

[locoman]

I would like to know of any manufacturers that ship new pc`s with the original windows cd rather than being provided with a recovery cd.

[Sandra]

I dont know of any off hand they seem to keep the cost down by pre installing windows and supplying the recovery one only.
Maybe if you found a local company to build a PC to your specifications you could say you wanted the full version and they would presumably price it accordingly.
Welcome aboard by the way Locoman  

[Clive]

I must admit that the only time I ever had the original Windows CD was when I bought from a local computer shop who actually made the PC to my specifications.

[Simon]

I wonder if you made it a condition of the sale that you had a proper Windows CD, they might give you one, rather than lose the sale, especially if you're spending quite a bit.  

[Adept]

Hi locoman

I think you'll find that the majority of the large boxshifters (Dell, Time, Evesham etc.) all ship with recovery CDs these days. I think it is a stipulation from Microsoft.

If you buy from a smaller local PC assembler, you will generally get an OEM copy of Windows. The flip side of this coin is that the PC will almost certainly be more expensive than the big brand boxes

[daveeb]

a bit off topic but if you only have a recovery cd what do you do if/when your hard drive goes t**s up and you have to replace it with a new one.  

[Lona]

a bit off topic but if you only have a recovery cd what do you do if/when your hard drive goes t**s up and you have to replace it with a new one

Yes, I would like to know the answer to that one also. I only have recovery disc.

[Sandra]

I dont know how it works but it does  
I put a new drive in Barras and did a zero fill on his original to totally wipe it and installed ME on it from his ME restore disk,before dual booting it with XP as well.
I think that the system files are transferred from the floppy then whatever it needs was on his cd :doggie:

[Simon]

You might find that the zero fill didn't actually wipe the hidden partition where ME was pre-loaded, Sandra.  I might be wrong, but I don't think the OS itself is on the recovery discs is it?  I don't believe you could use a recovery disc to load an OS on to a virgin drive.

[Sandra]

As far as I know Simon the zero fill thing restores the drive to factory condition,maybe Adept or Lobo can confirm/deny this  

[Simon]

I remember Brian saying that FDISK would not remove a pre-loaded OS in a hidden partition, but ZAP would do.  As you say, hopefully someone will confirm either way.

[Sandra]

Fdisk wont but I am 99.9% certain that the zero fill ones does Simon :doggie:

[lobo]

Fdisk wont but I am 99.9% certain that the zero fill ones does Simon :doggie:

Hi Sandra
I dont think zero fill does remove the hidden partition it only writes "0" to the known partition and not to the boot sector (the first 128bytes of the hard drive), the partition is a non standard partition in front of the C partition so fdisk cannot see it. If the partition was removed then the recovery disk would not work (thats if the recovery disk needs to access the hidden partition) it could have a drive image on the CD (like ghost) and not need a hidden partition

you can unhide the partition in order to get into that hidden partition. Use Gdisk.exe from norton ghost, PART, maybe partition magic.


Brian

[Sandra]

That Seagate Wizard that I use has a quick zero fill option for the first 16 sectors (I think) which will be the boot sector wont it?
Then it has the zero fill (full) option as well  

[Simon]

Zero filling a drive isn't the same as wiping it is it?  With zero fill, OK, you are deleting the data, but you are overwriting it with other data, rather than actually cleaning it.  It also takes hours, from what I understand.