Remember the old days when you bought a computer, the dealer also gave you the operating system (providing you purchased it) via CD or diskettes? I guess those days are over. I bought a new HP with Microsoft XP the other day. First thing I did was reformat and partition the disk drive. Bad mistake. I hunted for the XP CD, could not find it. E-mailed HP tech support only to get canned answers that did not answer my request for a system recovery CD to be mailed to me. It seems that HP provides the system recovery CD in the form of a hidden partition on the hard drive. I had deleted it when I reformatted. So now I have to Fed-Ex my shiny new computer back to HP so they can spend 5 minutes reimaging my hard drive. So why am I writing this? Just to tell you guys to be careful. Unless you buy XP retail out of the box, your vendor might only give you a soft copy on your hard drive. You will not be able to install it on another machine if your first machine goes *boom*. Cheers

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Yeah, it's been like this for a few years now, most new pcs don't come with the OS 
install disks/discs, just a recovery cdrom.. im surprised you didnt at least get 
the cdrom, putting it on a partition is stupid... anyway looks like you'll have to 
buy XP retail... maybe you can work out some discount with HP. good luck





On Monday, November 5, 2001 at 4:53 pm, rudedog wrote:
>Remember the old days when you bought a computer, the dealer also gave you the operating 
>system (providing you purchased it) via CD or diskettes?  I guess those days are 
>over.
>
>I bought a new HP with Microsoft XP the other day.  First thing I did was reformat 
>and partition the disk drive.  Bad mistake.  I hunted for the XP CD, could not find 
>it. E-mailed HP tech support only to get canned answers that did not answer my request 
>for a system recovery CD to be mailed to me.
>
>It seems that HP provides the system recovery CD in the form of a hidden partition 
>on the hard drive.  I had 
>deleted it when I reformatted. So now I have to Fed-Ex my shiny new computer back 
>to HP so they can spend 5 minutes reimaging my hard drive.
>
>So why am I writing this?  Just to tell you guys to be 
>careful.  Unless you buy XP retail out of the box, your 
>vendor might only give you a soft copy on your hard 
>drive.  You will not be able to install it on another 
>machine if your first machine goes *boom*.
>
>Cheers 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

if you have cd burner copy os. Never buy a puter retail lol have some one make one for you or do it yourself tons of inf on the web to do it if you have cd burner copy os


On Monday, November 5, 2001 at 9:54 pm, Robert DeFusco wrote:

>Yeah, it's been like this for a few years now, most new pcs don't come with the 
OS 
>install disks/discs, just a recovery cdrom.. im surprised you didnt at least get 
>the cdrom, putting it on a partition is stupid... anyway looks like you'll have 
to 
>buy XP retail... maybe you can work out some discount with HP. good luck
>
>



>On Monday, November 5, 2001 at 4:53 pm, rudedog wrote:
>Remember the old days when you bought a computer, the dealer also gave you the operating 
>system (providing you purchased it) via CD or diskettes?  I guess those days are 
>over.
>
>I bought a new HP with Microsoft XP the other day.  First thing I did was reformat 
>and partition the disk drive.  Bad mistake.  I hunted for the XP CD, could not find 
>it. E-mailed HP tech support only to get canned answers that did not answer my request 
>for a system recovery CD to be mailed to me.
>
>It seems that HP provides the system recovery CD in the form of a hidden partition 
>on the hard drive.  I had 
>deleted it when I reformatted. So now I have to Fed-Ex my shiny new computer back 
>to HP so they can spend 5 minutes reimaging my hard drive.
>
>So why am I writing this?  Just to tell you guys to be 
>careful.  Unless you buy XP retail out of the box, your 
>vendor might only give you a soft copy on your hard 
>drive.  You will not be able to install it on another 
>machine if your first machine goes *boom*.
>
>Cheers 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Same thing happened with me when I bought a new HP Desktop, no XP CD, no Restore CD, no software bundle CD. Everything stored on the hard drive. I returned the HP and let them know exactly why. I then bought a Dell, and look what was in the box....a whole handfull of software CD's including XP.


On Monday, November 5, 2001 at 4:53 pm, rudedog wrote:
>Remember the old days when you bought a computer, the dealer also gave you the operating
>system (providing you purchased it) via CD or diskettes? I guess those days are
>over.
>
>I bought a new HP with Microsoft XP the other day. First thing I did was reformat
>and partition the disk drive. Bad mistake. I hunted for the XP CD, could not find
>it. E-mailed HP tech support only to get canned answers that did not answer my request
>for a system recovery CD to be mailed to me.
>
>It seems that HP provides the system recovery CD in the form of a hidden partition
>on the hard drive. I had
>deleted it when I reformatted. So now I have to Fed-Ex my shiny new computer back
>to HP so they can spend 5 minutes reimaging my hard drive.
>
>So why am I writing this? Just to tell you guys to be
>careful. Unless you buy XP retail out of the box, your
>vendor might only give you a soft copy on your hard
>drive. You will not be able to install it on another
>machine if your first machine goes *boom*.
>
>Cheers

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

>I bought a new HP with Microsoft XP the other day. First thing I did was reformat
>and partition the disk drive. I finally was able to "unhide" the partition so that I could make a backup of it. I had to use Ranish's Partition Manager to do it (bought PowerQuest's Partition Pro and it couldn't even do it!). Its a Windows 98 compatible FAT32 partition, but its' been given a "Compaq Diagnostic" identifier (I didn't realize the merger of HP and Compaq was a done deal!).

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

More info... after looking at the files in a PRELOAD folder I've come to the conclusion 
that the recovery partition was created using a tool from www.softthinks.com.  

To make a boot CD, use the info at http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ 

... Tons of work that could have been avoided if HP had simply sent the CDs that 
users expect to receive.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I ran across a related problem when my motherboard failed, and I replaced it.  Turns 
out that the "Recovery DVD" won't load on a system unless that system's BIOS has 
a code branded into it.  HP calls this "tattooing" the board.

So, being out of warranty, HP was no help.  They told me to take it to a service 
center to have my new board "tattooed" or to buy a replacement mainboard from HP 
(at 250% retail).

According to them, even though I paid for and legally have rights to a legitimate 
software liscence for the OS and apps, I'll have to pay them more money to load any 
of it.

Here's how I fixed it without paying HP to load software I've already paid for:
- Make a BartPE CD:
http://flyakite.msfnhosting.com/BartPE.htm

- Copy the entire file structure of the DVD to a folder on your hard drive.
- Download the standard XP/2K boot image, which DOESN'T check for the BIOS "tattoo", 
or rip it from a standard XP or 2K install disk.
- Burn a new DVD with the file system of the original DVD, but the standard boot 
image.
- Boot from the newly created DVD, and let it copy all the preload files.  When it 
is ready to reboot, boot from the BartPE CD.
- In BartPE, open a command prompt and locate this file:
C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat
- Edit the batch file to be empty.  You could just remove the line that calls "run.py", 
but it's just as easy to empty the whole batch file.  It doesn't do anything useful.
- Reboot from the PC's hard drive.

Your OS will install fine.  As a final step, you should vow to NEVER spend another 
dime on HP/Compaq products.






On Thursday, November 15, 2001 at 1:01 am, Vince Sorensen wrote:

>

>More info... after looking at the files in a PRELOAD folder I've come to the conclusion 

>that the recovery partition was created using a tool from www.softthinks.com.  

>

>To make a boot CD, use the info at http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ 

>

>... Tons of work that could have been avoided if HP had simply sent the CDs that 

>users expect to receive.
 

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