> Aren't the HP Recovery Disks considered Shadow Copies of the OEM and
> reliable? I made my own recovery disks as well and I backup my system on
> an
> external HD (Western Digital book) each week. HP doesn't include MS disks
> with the computers anymore.

Problem with many mfr. discs is that they only relate to a specific hardware
configuration, so many of the drivers that you would find on the MS retail
and OEM discs are missing.
In theory the retail and OEM authentic MS discs install the same OS,
the difference being in the licensing. When an OEM installation
goes pear shaped, or deactivates, you are
told to contact the (OEM) vendor to resolve the problem.
The OEM vendor should have provided a recovery route, either
media, or on the HD. So when the HD fails, you can't
recover as the recovery partition has gone with it.
Recovery optical media may of course wipe all your data, thus
reverting you to as received from the vendor state.

Yes- and ?
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:4793b47e$0$13925$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>> Aren't the HP Recovery Disks considered Shadow Copies of the OEM and
>> reliable? I made my own recovery disks as well and I backup my system on
>> an
>> external HD (Western Digital book) each week. HP doesn't include MS disks
>> with the computers anymore.
>
> Problem with many mfr. discs is that they only relate to a specific
> hardware
> configuration, so many of the drivers that you would find on the MS retail
> and OEM discs are missing.
> In theory the retail and OEM authentic MS discs install the same OS,
> the difference being in the licensing. When an OEM installation
> goes pear shaped, or deactivates, you are
> told to contact the (OEM) vendor to resolve the problem.
> The OEM vendor should have provided a recovery route, either
> media, or on the HD. So when the HD fails, you can't
> recover as the recovery partition has gone with it.
> Recovery optical media may of course wipe all your data, thus
> reverting you to as received from the vendor state.