I am writing this for my daughter. She got a new pc yesterday that she hasn't set up yet. She bought it from pc world with xp home installed. She has no xp cd rom with it...is this ok? is she expected to buy one? Won't it ask her to register when she first starts up her pc? Its an e machine P4. Grateful for a quick reply. thanks bridibee

I just got one last week and I had no CD. ENJOY! Always been one to ask questions.

Is that supposed to help?? SHe will need a cd in the future surely...what about reinstall, what about sfc /scannow jobs etc? Please...someoene?? Thanks Bridiebee

It is probably one of those OEM PCs which either come with a special recovery CD or has the system imaged onto a hidden part of the hard drive. If it is one of these then chances are that it is already pre-registered. However, in my opinion this is not a satisfactory arrangement. However, sadly this is how most of the PCs are sold these days. The lack of a windows CDROM means that somethings (such as the repair option provided by the CDROM) will not be available for such PCs. If you have such a problem then the last resort you would have at least is to recover your system to the level it was on the day you bought it which could leave you with loss of your valuable data. Also if it is a system where the system is imaged onto a hidden part of the hard drive then you would loose everything if your hard drive were ever to fail. You would then have to go back to where you purchased it from to arrange for a replacement hard drive and OS which may end up being costly. In either case you should consider having a backup strategy should such a situation were ever to arise. It may be an idea to buy a WinXP CDROM anyway. They can be bought at a reasonable price from e-bay. Particularly as you only need the CDROM as you already posses a valid COA and code. Anybody reading this and contemplating buying a PC / Laptop should insist on being provided with a Windows CDROM if at all possible. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

Sorry, birdiebee! You said you wanted a quick reply. My computer papers state..."Recovery built-in...There are no CD's to lose...it's on your hard drive. If you would still like a set of Recovery CD's, you can use this tool to create your own for future use. See your user documenttation for complete instructions." Hope that helped. Always been one to ask questions.

As an alternative you can download a keyfinder that tells her the number of her particular machine, from here. to find out her number. Then if you have the same version of XP (home or pro) you can copy your cd for her for future use. When I say copy I mean the whole disk to an image and then to another cd. Not copy all the files off the cd and then on to another one. If you do that it will not be bootable. Most cd writing software has a copy disk feature. When she has to ever use it she will have to use her numbers. She might have a number sticker on her computer, it might differ from the number you got off of the keyfinder. That's because some big manufactures have a lot of numbers from Microsoft and that is their oem number. Keep both numbers just incase one of them don't work.

Gateway recently bought "e-machines", been dealing with them for years. Call them up and insist they ship the disks that belong to the system. _________________________ The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!