Hi I was thinking of buying a Dell laptop with Windows ME on it (since there's no option of buying a computer from Dell without OS) and converting the machine to Linux. Does anybody know for a fact though if it would be possible to install the OEM version of Me that comes with Dell computers on some other machine, since I have no intention of using it on my notebook and am not rich enough to just discard the OS. I happened to come across a post in the Windows 2000 forum where the user claims that he wasn't able to install the copy of Win2000 that came with his Dell on another computer, and would like to know in advance if I'm about to face similar problem. Thanks a lot in advance for your input.

Howdy, My best advice is to call Dell's tech support and just ask them our ask the sales rep. If they ship you a restore CD there is a good chance that you won't be able to do it since they can set them up these days to check the BIOS and if things don't match it won't install. Now, if you get a normal OS CD I don't see why it would not allow you to use it on another system. If this didn't answer your question or you have others, just e-mail me. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude

Hi b9: Generally speaking, tier one OEM's do not send you a true Windows CD. The recovery cd they send is an OEM preload, that has all of the drivers for the rest of the hardware installed at the time of the Windows install. These drivers are istalled at the behest of the batch files in the preload utility and will usually render the disk useless on any other system. So although I have no direct experience with Dell's recovery, I would suspect that the disks are for your make and model only, and will work on your make and model only. Love the nick by the way. Take care and be safe. -TimeRider