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An XP Issue

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by mikep

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Dear members can anyone help with the following:

I have just purchased a new notebook. My notebook arrived with Windows-XP installed. I was amazed to find NO XP CD with my system so I called the manufacturer and they told me that the CD does not come with the system as all the install XP file are on my H/D should I need to do a reinstal etc.. They told me they were hidden in a partition on my H/D but wouldn't give me any info on how to extract them onto CD for the future. I have noticed that my H/D has been partioned and there are files in the hidden partition but I cannot access the files.
When I run 'diskmgmt' from Windows/System32 I can see clearly that my disk has two partitions and I get the following information:

DISK 0 HOME (C:) HEALTHY (SYSTEM) NTFS
DISE_BACKUP HEALTHY (UNKNOWN PARTITION) FAT32

I can view the properties of my HOME partition but not my DISE I guess my XP install files are in the DISE_BACKUP partition but it will not allow me to view or extract these files. Can anyone help? where are my XP install files??

I have noticed in my windows directory that there is a folder called 'I386' and it appears to have the compressed XP install files there.

Please can somebody help with my problem?
Thank you

Mike

7 replies

by timthetoolman

Hi,

I'm not exactly sure about the legalities of your problem but it seems to me that they should be supplying you with a CD. The OEM one...

If you need to wipe your HD completely for any reason, then you're going to lose your copy of XP.

If your partition information goes west on the HD then, again, you'll lose your XP.

Also, you should have access to the FULL amount of HD space you have - not have several hundred Mb of it taken up with a copy of XP...

If it were me, I'd be going back to them and demanding the original OEM CD. They cant use it themselves as it needs to be "activated" and this can only be done for your PC alone.

If they have some other method of activation, then its probably illegal.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Tim.

by mikel~t

Legally you should have a system CD, with a license agreement, a holographic cd, and a license number. I don't know if this is Dell, or gateway, or what, but it sounds to me like Microsoft should be contacted to find out exactly what the legality issues are in regards to what you have been told.

The copy of XP must be a corporate group licensing version which is probably why they don't want to give you the CD....they probably only have one, with multiple copies for imaging hard drives, and the license number they are using is probably not an oem number, but a corporate group licensing number.

Anyway, I'd image the drive to another hard drive, which is not an easy process if you've never done it before. You'd need to take out you laptop drive, and run norton ghost to image the laptop drive to another IDE drive, and set it on your shelf somewhere. You might break any warranty with the laptop maker, but it's your call.

Hope this helps.

Mike

I am curious though...who is the vendor of the laptop?

by jws1951

DISE is an OEM restore product from Powerquest
based on its drive image technology, its there to get your image up and running quickly in case of a crash. BUT it is no answer for a HD crash. most oem's give you a recovery cd which does the same thing and can, with a little work, be used on a new HD.
check out this Web site
http://www.powerquest.com/oem/slides/DISE.pdf
as the previous answer mentioned

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