Try contacting Gateway and ask to speak to a manager. Part of the OEM agreement that they sign makes them responsible for a recovery solution. At some point they will have sold off all their old disks to a 3rd party company, so a manager should be able to assist you.
If you have a valid license key on the machine then you could try a generic OEM CD. Have you looked on the drive to see if there is an install folder on it? Mike From: Crawford, Scott [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 26 April 2010 19:44 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: xp media Agreed. I have a whole stack of Dell's here, but they wont work on your gateway. http://cgi.ebay.com/GATEWAY-Operating-System-XP-reinstallation-cd-Ver-1-3-/260590276071?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cac640de7 From: Richard Stovall [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 12:25 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: xp media My personal experience is that you need an install disk from the original vendor. Have you checked eBay? On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 1:18 PM, James Kerr <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Just a CD without a key. I know I can by just media from CDW or just licenses for my job because I have volume licensing. Anyway it appears that MS is saying I'm SOL, or my friend is anyway. Looks like she is going to spend some $ if she wants this thing fixed. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl Houseman" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 1:02 PM Subject: RE: xp media It's not clear what you're asking to buy. If you know a place to purchase CD's without license keys, I'd stay away from that like the plague. If you're asking if we know such a place, I wouldn't use one if I did. If you purchase a CD with a license key, then just use the license key that comes with it. If you can scare up any "real" OEM CD (from friends or family), it *may* just work as long as the edition (Home/Pro/MCE) is the same. There are cases where generic CDs won't work, as I found with an old Toshiba laptop several years ago (wouldn't activate and MS won't approve the activation over the phone). Carl -----Original Message----- From: James Kerr [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 11:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: xp media I have a laptop of a friend and its needs to have Windows XP Home reinstalled from scratch. They do not have the restore CDs and the restore partition doesnt have the required files. I called Gateway to buy restore CDs but they only have them for PCs no older than 3 years. Anyone know if it's possible to buy an XP home edition media CD and use the license key that came from Gateway that's on the laptop with it? James ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
