----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Reeves" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'The Hardware List'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 9:50 AM
Subject: RE: [H] Here's a weird ruling from MS
Hmm. That's what I was wondering. We picked up4 IBM Thinkpad Micros (the
little 3lb suckers) recently, and they came with no media, just a "restore"
partition. Hell yes, I'd use other media in that case.. or, if you need to
just do a repair install, E-Machines, Dell, HP's "System Restore" discs
don't help a lot as you don't want to just format your harddrive.
10 years ago (years before I became a computer technician) we power users knew to format the hard drive of any new name brand computer we bought and install Windows the right way, a clean install. I have never seen a clean install that did not allow the computer to run faster than it ran right out of the box with the OEM mess on it.
In all of these letters there is one theme (if you want to stay within the rules of Microsoft). Have your computer custom built (or buy a computer) ONLY from a computer manufacturer/seller who will furnish you the Microsoft OEM version of your operating system CD. You want a CD direct from Microsoft that has not been altered by the computer manufacturer.
If this leave big guys out, tough! They need to provide the right CD or quit selling computers.
OR you can keep breaking the rules as most do and use a Microsoft OEM operating system to do a clean install on a name brand computer that has the Product Key on a sticker attached to the computer. Always extract the actual Product key that Dell, Hewlett Packard, Compaq, eMachine or Gateway installed Windows with in case you need it to authenticate Windows. Rarely do those folks enter the same Product Key that is shown on the COA sticker when they install Windows. Most times the Product Key shown on the COA works, but there are those times it does not work and you need the actual key the OEM entered.
Chuck
