OEM setups without true OS CDs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Knack
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K

Knack

How long have laptop manfacturers been licensing Windows without including a
true OS setup CD, but only "recovery CDs"? Are those OEM recovery CDs
capable of setting up a new Windows installation on a fresh blank
replacement HDD if the original HDD fails?
 
Knack said:
How long have laptop manfacturers been licensing Windows without including a
true OS setup CD, but only "recovery CDs"? Are those OEM recovery CDs
capable of setting up a new Windows installation on a fresh blank
replacement HDD if the original HDD fails?
Click to expand...

Answer #1: For quite some time.

Answer #2: No problem. The first thing I do, when setting up a new system,
is reformat the harddrive and reinstall the OS from the "recovery CD."

The only additional files you'll need are the drivers for your particular
system, and they're often included on the "recovery CD."

Larry
 
Knack said:
How long have laptop manfacturers been licensing Windows without including a
true OS setup CD, but only "recovery CDs"? Are those OEM recovery CDs
capable of setting up a new Windows installation on a fresh blank
replacement HDD if the original HDD fails?
Click to expand...

It's even worse than that. IBM is sending out its computers with no
external media at all.. The recovery image is on the Harddisk in a protected
partition.

Al...
 
For years.

It often is possible to do a new install from the recovery CDs if you
know how, although officially it's not possible and you will be told it
can't be done. The key is that MOST of them do contain an "I386"
folder, and if you know how to use that, you can do a full install
virtually as if it was a retail CD. Even when the recovery CD doesn't
contain an "I386" folder, often the installation that it does has such a
folder on the hard drive, and by burning that to a CD, you can
effectively accomplish the same thing.
 
I've never seen an i386 folder automatically written to the HDD during any
Windows setup. However, I've manually copied it from a true OS setup CD to
the HDDs of previous WinNT4 computers to make it faster/easier to add/change
components afterwards. As I recall, the Service Pack CDs also have i386
folders, and is really the preferred place for directing Windows to look
when installing new components.

You're saying that some setups made with recovery CDs will automatically
place an i386 folder on the HDD? Particularly recovery CDs that don't even
have such a folder visible???

A setup program is needed to utilize the i386 folder. That program is
normally *outside* of that folder and is specialized for the new OS.

1 OS setup program + 1 full i386 folder = 1 regular setup CD; *not* 1
recovery CD

--
Remove the antispam letter 'x' in my address to send mail to my Inbox


Barry Watzman said:
For years.

It often is possible to do a new install from the recovery CDs if you
know how, although officially it's not possible and you will be told it
can't be done. The key is that MOST of them do contain an "I386"
folder, and if you know how to use that, you can do a full install
virtually as if it was a retail CD. Even when the recovery CD doesn't
contain an "I386" folder, often the installation that it does has such a
folder on the hard drive, and by burning that to a CD, you can
effectively accomplish the same thing.
Click to expand...
 
Lawrence Glasser said:
Answer #1: For quite some time.

Answer #2: No problem. The first thing I do, when setting up a new system,
is reformat the harddrive and reinstall the OS from the "recovery CD."

The only additional files you'll need are the drivers for your particular
system, and they're often included on the "recovery CD."
Click to expand...

Were you reinstalling a replacement HDD on otherwise the same hardware
(mainboard, CPU)? And how old was the last recovery CD that you installed
on a fresh HDD?

I've never tried it. Barry says its normally impossible, and that's what I
would expect. Why else would OEMs supply anything other than a true
Microsoft setup CD when the real deal can do a reinstall right over the
original setup without deleting data files?

Hmmm... the recovery CD knows which drivers to use. Perhaps not NT, but
Win9X/ME/2000/XP being PnP OSes could detect new hardware then provide
drivers and resources for it.
 
Whereas On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:08:17 GMT, "Knack" <[email protected]>
scribbled:
, I thus relpy:
Were you reinstalling a replacement HDD on otherwise the same hardware
(mainboard, CPU)? And how old was the last recovery CD that you installed
on a fresh HDD?

I've never tried it. Barry says its normally impossible, and that's what I
would expect. Why else would OEMs supply anything other than a true
Microsoft setup CD when the real deal can do a reinstall right over the
original setup without deleting data files?

Hmmm... the recovery CD knows which drivers to use. Perhaps not NT, but
Win9X/ME/2000/XP being PnP OSes could detect new hardware then provide
drivers and resources for it.
Click to expand...

You'd sometime have to provide the drivers in addition to the OS,
sometimes anyway. On my laptop, with Win95, the display chip was the
only one stock with the OS, the rest requiring Manufacturer supplied
drivers.
 
In my experience (mostly with Toshiba), ALL of the recovery CDs have
created an I386 folder on the hard drive as part of the installation.
The location varies, sometimes \I386, more often well burried several
levels deep, usually under \Windows (but not to difficult to find). On
some brands of laptops (HP/Compaq and I think some IBM models), it ends
up in a separate drive in a "recovery" partition. But yes, my
experience is almost the exact opposite of yours.

As for the recovery CD itself, some of them have an explicit and
conventional I386 folder, but more commonly they have a "drive image"
that is simply restored, as the most "space-economical" way to restore a
complete hard drive from the minimal number of CDs.

I've never seen an i386 folder automatically written to the HDD during any
Windows setup. However, I've manually copied it from a true OS setup CD to
the HDDs of previous WinNT4 computers to make it faster/easier to add/change
components afterwards. As I recall, the Service Pack CDs also have i386
folders, and is really the preferred place for directing Windows to look
when installing new components.

You're saying that some setups made with recovery CDs will automatically
place an i386 folder on the HDD? Particularly recovery CDs that don't even
have such a folder visible???

A setup program is needed to utilize the i386 folder. That program is
normally *outside* of that folder and is specialized for the new OS.

1 OS setup program + 1 full i386 folder = 1 regular setup CD; *not* 1
recovery CD

--
Remove the antispam letter 'x' in my address to send mail to my Inbox


For years.

It often is possible to do a new install from the recovery CDs if you
know how, although officially it's not possible and you will be told it
can't be done. The key is that MOST of them do contain an "I386"
folder, and if you know how to use that, you can do a full install
virtually as if it was a retail CD. Even when the recovery CD doesn't
contain an "I386" folder, often the installation that it does has such a
folder on the hard drive, and by burning that to a CD, you can
effectively accomplish the same thing.


Knack wrote:
Click to expand...

including a
Click to expand...
 
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