Our company as a matter of practice and security, reformats and reinstalls all software to the c:\ drive when an employee leaves the company. Just to make sure that personal stuff is destroyed as well as the 2000 themes that seem to end up on these machines.

We used to use a non-oem version of Windows 98, NT or 2000 rather than the disks that came with the PC.

We have at least as many OS licenses as we have PC's. (If we can count the oem software) The reason we didn't use the manufacture's version is that we could not control the partitioning of the hard drives. (Could not control size or type NTFS or FAT) The HP or Compaq OS did the fdisk so that the PC was in the original state.

Several months ago, we got a BSA, Business Software Alliance mailing that ended that practice. The HP license numbers only work with their CD's some but not all of the Compaq license numbers work with the non Compaq software.

Does anyone have a trick to control restore CD's or at least control their partitioning? There are no floppies involved.

We are now ordering all of our PC's without an OS and buying licenses in bulk (Believe it or not most of the PC's still show up with the OS installed.)