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Thread: No Windows cd with my Dell

  1. #11
    Dead Man Walking
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    I would recomend shelling out the $10 for the disks from Dell. And go ahead and do it now as opposed to waiting untill you realy need them. I ran into a situation not to long ago where they had discontinued the recovery CDs for the model I was working on (customer unit) and the customer was stuck buying a copy of off the shelf XP and then we had to spend a couple of HOURS trying to track down the right drivers. Dell did not have them identified on thier site.

  2. #12
    Senior Member
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    When I get a new pc and install all my Apps and get all the settings right I make my own recovery image by ghosting the machine to an external usb harddrive. If I mess something up or merely want to revert my system to then I simply boot off the Norton cd and image my pc off the usb drive.

  3. #13
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    I recently saw this on a hp or compaq (aren't they the same now?) laptop. They didn't give ANY system disks. However, there was a utility in the start menu that let you burn your own recovery image to DVDs. It burns an image of the machine in its current state. (Like Ghost)

    There was a tiny little peice of paper explaining that they no longer ship the media, but gave steps on how to burn it on your own.

    BTW: Net2Infinity nice avatar...
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  4. #14
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    Not all dells have the utility to burn a copy or the restore. If its the restore Im thinking of, you can boot from a knoppix cd to see the partition. I havent really tried to open it or DD it. Its a ghost image of sorts, they will not send a cd. I fought with them for 3 months. Mines a home edition and the keys on the back of the pc, if the drive goes south you can just use that key with any xp home cd you can get a hold of.
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  5. #15
    Banned
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    I do remember having to do what phishphreek mentions with my Compaq Desktop 2 years ago, it used 7 CDs. I then erased the partition on the drive to regain my 2 gigs.

    I guess I lucked out with my Toshiba (purchased in December) giving me a recovery DVD (although not a legit copy of Windows CD , the good old days, eh?)

    A friend of mine had made the mistake on his HP and fdisk'ed the drive before making a recovery disk or copying the partition. He called HP and they gave him recovery disks for his HP. So contacting Dell is prob the best thing to do and asking for a disk.

    Personally, I always make backups of the information on a new computer in case of harddrive failures, virus outbreaks or ID10t errors.

    Can never be too paranoid

  6. #16
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    These recovery disks really are a pain for private users. All they basically do is restore the computer back to its original state (assuming it is not a repair/corruption issue).

    This is not very helpful if you have to replace the HDD, as you will be faced with installing all the OS and driver updates again.

    At least with a genuine OS disk you can slipstream it, and cut this work down. It wouldn't be so bad if you could create as many recovery disks as you liked, because then you could keep them up to date. Unfortunately on machines that I have seen you are only allowed to make one, and naturally you do this as soon as possible.

    I guess the best solution at the moment is to use something like Acronis, Ghost, or whatever and periodically create images of your drive? This would certainly give you the fastest recovery time, but unfortunately it costs.

    /aside/ yes phish~ HP bought Compaq a while back..........and before that Compaq took over Digital.

  7. #17
    When I ordered my e1705 a few months ago, I knew I wasn't shelling out $10 for the OS disc. Not a lot of money, especially considering the overall price of the system, but (for me anyway) it's the principle of the matter. I simply emailed support and told them I would be formatting the hard drive -- reinstalling Windows, drivers, software, etc. -- and they shipped out all three discs. I received them that same week.

  8. #18
    Senior Member
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    I'm amazed that an OS disk isn't supplied with the PC. I've always used a laptop and am very familiar with the problems of recovery disks and the absolute refusal of the manufacturer to provide an "ordinary" installation disk. I have, after all, paid for the hardware as well as the OS, so what's the problem in supplying me with a "normal" OS disk? I resorted to purchasing a separate one and then installed that, so avoiding all the additional manufacturer-specific software but it means that I have 2 OS activation keys.

  9. #19
    Leftie Linux Lover the_JinX's Avatar
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    Try getting your Windows tax back.. That's even worse..

    I have tried with Toshiba (seems to be easier now) and DELL..

    But in the case of DELL you can only get out of paying Windows tax by buying their server range.. None of the home computer models come without OS..
    Or do they finaly have FreeDOS as an option (heard something about that months ago)..

    The thing seems to be that 99% of the users don't care about such issues..

    Only the techy people care..
    The others just want their computer to browse for porn..
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  10. #20
    Senior Member
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    Let me clear up a couple things for everyone here.
    Dell started this when they instated the MRI (media reduction initiative) witch means Dimensions and inspiron systems sent during a date rang would be sent with an Image Restore partition on the drive. Dell partnered with Symantec and created a tool that allows any user to press CTRL- F11 at the Dell splash screen and it will re-image the system back to the factory image in about 10min. but as said in previous posts it is worthless if the hard drive goes bad. witch is why on these systems the User can burn a copy of the Dell OS CD, by going to Start > All Programs > Dell Accessories > Operating System Restore CD. However if all ells fails just call Dell Tech support and they will issue the media Free of charge (if you are in warrantee.)
    Dell did this on the Dimension and Inspiron systems because those systems are geared toward the home users who find it difficult and time consuming to reinstall windows if things screw up horribly. (As windows often does with home users)

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