Dell and WinXP CD's

It is my understanding that Dell no longer ships OEM WinXP CD's with a new laptop. To make matters worse, they take ~10GB of your HD to place a virtual copy of the operating system. How close I'm I?

What are the work arounds? Can you purchase the WinXP CD's from Dell?

Thanks,
Hermit

 

I THINK dell provides a program on the laptop that can write XP CDs.

 

$10 to get the media with your machine; if you make a big enough issue, you may be able to get the media for free ("i already paid for the OS blah blah blah")

i had about 4 GBs lost to the image partition; the image partition restores to factory settings (with bloatware)

edit: forgot to metion, yes i believe there is a one-time burn feature for the (non-bloatware) OS. needs to be done before you do any reformatting/repartitioning.

 

I don't think they are putting the burning program on the systems anymore. Like drumfu said, you can buy the media when your purchase your system. You can try to call, just be aware that it will probably take a few phone calls and some patience.

Another option is to use a XP CD that you already have. The registration key is located on the bottom of your laptop, so if you have a CD that is the same version as what you ordered, you can use it instead of having to buy it.

SG

 

Thank you SouthernGirl,

You are correct, did a little more checking, whereas Dell Business puts the buy CD option right with the OS select menu item, Dell Home buries the option on the 3rd page. XP MCE is only $8, just never looked at the 3rd page before.

Thank you also drumfu and GavinUK.

Hermit