Does Anyone Know how Dell do it ?

[tellboy]

I recently bought another Dell PC and this time find that there is no Windows XP operating system disk supplied.

When you switch on you get one chance of burning an "image"
I do not know if this image is a bootable system disk yet but when I contacted Dell and asked for the disk in case my hard drive failed at sometime and also I thought I had paid for one anyway I got this message from Dell.

"Please accept my apologies but Dell is no longer supplying the
back up cds and the back up for the operating system is stored
in such a way in your system that even if you hard drive fails
or crashes the back up can be retrieved".

I am left wondering how this miracle is achieved with a failed hard disk ?

Also what if I change my hard drive ?

Is this just general policy with suppliers now ?

 

[Me__2001]

someone on here said about this a while back, i think they are told not to send them out with the computers

if your hard drive fails then your chance of recovering the image is pretty slim

 

[Ian]

If you push enough I am sure you will get a CD, as it is the only way to recover you PC should it totally fail. There is a handy feature where if you press CTRL+F11 on bootup (when the blue dell bar appears) then you can reset the main partition to a fresh install of windows (quite handy indeed!).

 

[Zhoul]

Wow... That's all I can say.

Dell is really the only 'pre-built' PC that I'd buy on the market today, but the stupidity of this decision is starting to make me reconcider. It's probably a request from Microsoft, in their attempts to scale down pirating of it's software, however, this completely puts the user at a disadvantage when trying to recover quickly from system issues.

Wow...

!

Well, I'm never one to take the 'base' install of any new system I buy and would highly recommend installing a "Real" "Fresh" copy of whatever OS you have (you know.. one without all the crap Dell drops in there).

Just Damn...

 

[muckshifter]

Unfortunately it is a sign of the times ...

If a manufacturing company, say Ford, do not need or can do without buying 1 screw that cost a penny ... and they usually use 1 million a year, then I know what I would do ...

You may have recourse only if you stipulated that you wanted a "proper OS CD" ... what does the contract say.

 

[DragonMaster]

hey ya can get ya image back if ya know how there is a program call cia retriver i have it on my pc anything ya delete or in some cases reformat ya can get it back if ya want to try it . it is a free down load http://www.snapfiles.com/Shareware/system/swdatarecovery.html ICE ECC or Fundelete or PC Inspector Smart Recovery they all work well good luck

 

[tellboy]

Things are getting worse with Dell Support !

Thanks Guys,
The Customer support guy named Mohammed just seems to press the same hotkeys to give the standard email replies that Dell no longer suppliy an XP OS disk just the image on the Hard Drive.
I asked him what I do if I change my hard drive and he still says I can run the image from my hard drive . From What an empty drive ?
I am afraid I am not getting any sense at all from this guy.
I do not think they have to legally supply you with an OS Disk but will check .
My next Dell query was that the Dell Support Site when you log on to it asks to click on a report on the configuration of your brand new £1000 plus PC.
Up comes the Tag Number Delivery Date etc Machine Specification and I discover I am the proud owner of a "Celeron" processor not the Pentium 4 3.00 GHZ I thought I had paid for.
When I contact Technical Support about this using the web pages I get an automated reply that says my Email is interpreted as a "request to upgrade my processor" and would I contact Sales Dept.. Is it hell I am trying to find out why they have taken money for a Pentium 4 after checking my order specification.

Also just found out that my hard drive( two in fact) is Raid 0 anyway and my Partition Magic 8 software will not work on stripe drives. Aaaagh !!!!

 

[crazylegs]

Download this and run it, this will tell you exactly what components are in your system....



http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=3

Hope that does the trick........

 

[DragonMaster]

tellboy

what country ya in ??? cuss if ya in the usa i got friends that work for dell here im sure they be glad to help ya out ill get there phone number for ya if ya here in the usa peace

 

[tellboy]

Thanks CrazyLegs. Downloaded Everest and it and it says I do have a Pentium 4 after all . So Dell's software is up the spout obviously. You have saved another load of email hassle with Dell.
Thanks DragonMaster. I am in the UK. As you know you can soon get a $5 operating system disk on Ebay (no scruples there as I have paid for one) it was just the principle of the matter.

 

[DragonMaster]

tellboy

lol good one mate $5 myself i have a little over 200 xp disk as well as a few dell xp restore disk had a few dells in my time got rid of dell built my owne much better and cheeper