Hi One of my friends bought a Sony Centrino 1.7GHz laptop from Futureshop, but he didn't get any CD such as Windows XP or Recovery CDs. The sale man at Futureshop told him that they put those in the hard drive. Is this true? From my understanding that the Windows OS has to be on a CD in order to install because after he partions or formats the hard drive, then he couldn't install anything from the hard drive, right? THank you so much

That's correct. If you format your hard drive, you need the OS cd to reinstall it. Tell your friend to go back to the store and get it from him or take the machine back. Keep Smiling It makes them think you're up to something...

All brand name PC especially Sony, HP and Compaq are sold without recovery CD. It is the buyer's responsibility to create one from the Start Menu. What they (System Builders) do is very totally legitimate with M$ blessing. The store cannot do anything. You can brng it back for refund and use the money to build your own with a retail XP CD. i_XpUser

Speaking of brand name PC's...most comes with preinstalled Windows Media Center and ... get it... no floppy drive. i_XpUser

Do a search on the drive for an I386 folder. If it's there, it holds the XP install files. That's not nearly as satisfactory as a CD, but if it is there and he has a burner, tell him to burn that folder to a CD or DVD.

Thank you so much veryone. Oh, so you mean that if there is an I386 folder, that means the "original" files of the whole Windows XP CD is in there?

some laptops come with no recovery CD because they have already put the installation CD files into the harddrive (to save cost I guess). It's in one partition, HIDDEN. If your current OS gets corrupted, the hidden partition will bootup instead and give you a menu to choose (install etc), it will even do re-formatting for your current C drive. If you want to find out where it is, use partition magic, fdisk or other partition softwares.