HP does not send a copy of OS for reinstall?

ok. so i am thinking of getting an HP. i have been lurking around here, and am surprised by what i have read. is it true that HP does not supply disks which contain the progams installed on their computers without bloatware?

this is ridiculous if it's true. how can they charge you 20$ to burn you a reinstallatin cd that just reinstalls all of their bloatware? i was under the impression that if you buy the laptop- you have PAID for the software that is on it, and should therefore receive a copy of said software (not a bloatware copy).

so- if i buy an HP and want to clean install my OS, do i have to buy a copy of that OS? that is just nuts! tell me it ain't so!

apologies if this has been posted a thousand times before. word.

 

They don't "burn you" reinstallation disks, they are premade.
They only give an option, when you get your pc, you can make your own reinstall disks. Yes, $20 to send you reinstall disks is silly, but that's how they are doing it.
Personally, I'd opt for the extra $20 and get them. That's just me.
I honestly don't know, if they are like the traditional "imaged" disks, that install an image back on your hard drive, with bloatware etc, or if it's a true windows install disk. Dell's are true install disks, that's all I know.

 

that is the question-

do they send you a true windows install disk, or not?

i can't believe that they could refuse sending you a windows OS disk if you requested it. i mean, haven't you paid for that software? how can they not send it?

if they aren't going to send me the software installed on the computer- they can discount it and send me a blank hard drive as far as i'm concerned.

 

they dont anymore, u have to buy one from compusa for 5 dollars, its really not an issue if u live in the us

 

No, you can either borrow a Windows Vista disc or buy the Vista Upgrade DVD($5 or so) and do a clean install using the license key provided by HP. Check the stickies on how to do this. Its pretty simple and beats paying $20 or using bloat filled OS.

Dont buy them!! They are exactly the same as the ones you can burn yourself after you get the laptop. Instead, try the clean Vista install I suggested above.

What HP and every other manufacturer sells is the the OEM versions which means all they need to do is give you the ability to reinstall the OS which they do by providing the restore partition on the HDD and the ability to burn the disks. The EULA never says anything about a clean install.

 

My 8510w came with orignial OS disks for Vista Business 32 AND 64 and reinstall disks for the other stuff.
Course I bought XP for it instead but I will likley use the others later.

 

Do Gateways come with the OS disc? I'm thinking about purchasing a notebook and I'm turned off the HP for the reason that my desktop HP came with no such discs.

 

AFAIK they dont. You might want to ask that question in the Gateway forum. Unfortunately pretty much none of the manufacturers these days provide a disc, they expect you to burn them yourselves or give you a restore partition on the HD.

 

ok. so i'm not familiar with this. i can buy a vista OS cd for 5$? or am i buying some vista upgrade cd or something? this seems like it may circumvent the problem, but i am still wondering how HP gets away with this.

i mean, how can they NOT provide you with copies of the software that you have paid for when you purchase their laptops? weird. maybe i'm just old school? but the price for that software is included in the price of that laptop so i think you are entitled to receive a hard copy of it, no?

sure, you can burn recovery disks yourself- but this is not the crux of the matter. what i am saying here is you have bought the software- you should get a copy of it. how do they manage this? anyone called them out on it? i guess i'm just old fashioned. when i buy software- i like a copy of it, not just have it installed on my HD.

bummer that a lot of companies have started doing this.

 

All the business lines from HP come with the installation disks included. Proper, real OS installation disks and drivers/software. Not even Lenovo does that for their Thinkpads.

But yeah, I think everyone else just has to bite the bullet and burn the restore DVDs off their HDD

 

thanks for the info, people. so, when i burn recovery disks from my HD- is that just like burning myself an OS reinstallation cd? what will happen when i put the recovery disk in my drive and try to do a clean install? i'm sure this is in a sticky... probably a redundant question.

 

00011, you are buying a vista upgrade cd for 5 dollars, you follow the clean install guide, burn your swsetup for drivers and programs. Its really not hard to do, and the guide is step by step and I'm sure people will help you out here if u get stuck. Just keep in mind to order the anytime upgrade disc when you order your hp. And also, make sure you have a usb flash drive(memory storage device) for the clean install, that would be useful. If you wanted, you could go hp business line, but that would cost more. Or go for a thinkpad or etc business line as bloatware will be minimum and u prob wont have to do a clean install.

For your other question, the recovery disc is a factory image of your notebook when you first got it, with all the bloatware, you can't use it for a clean install. Read the clean install with no activation guide for more details. The recovery disc is just a back up if you screw up bigtime during the clean install.

 

As I said before...they dont need to. All they need to provide the user(since you are buying an OEM software) is a way to reinstall the OS. Thats it. They can provide a partition on the hard drive or provide OS discs or let the user burn their own discs. People have complained,you can see Dell is now starting to offer some business systems without bloatware but change is slow.

BTW this i a fairly recent change for HP. They used to offer OS disc's up until mid 2006 on their consumer laptops. Hopefully they reverse their policy but I dont expect anything to happen soon.

 

wow. crazy. so- what if my hard drive crashes... obviously the recovery partition is of no use. what do i do then? rhetorical question- don't answer.

i am unclear about the whole burn your own recovery cd thing... again- does this create recovery disks that reinstall the OS clean, or do they just reinstall an image of the bloatware? can you boot from your burned recovery disks/alter partitions/etc like you can with a real copy of the OS?

i realize now that the recovery disk that you can BUY for 20$ from HP is an image of their bloatware... wow. that sux. i guess most consumers don't care about this stuff, that's how they can pull it off.

 

Well, thats why they pester you to burn the recovery discs everytime you boot the system until you do(ofcourse you can disable the message if you dont want to).

The recovery discs you burn is just an image of the partition. Basically it will put your system back to factory state(bloatware, partition and all). Ofcourse you can boot from the restore CD/DVD and the partition to reimage the HDD but its not the same as the retail OS disc. They dont allow a clean OS reinstall if thats what you are asking.

 

thanks for the answer. yes, that is exactly what i'm asking. so HP computers do not come with any way to clean install. wow. i think that may be a deal breaker for me. guess i could use the anytime upgrade... i can spare 5 bucks.

also- thanks for all of your informative, prompt replies! woot!

wow- that clean install guide stickied here is good. i'll use that for sure.

 

It's cheaper for HP to buy the OEM versions of the OS, compared to a retail version. The reason the bloatware is there is HP gets paid a fee from the companies for each computer they install the bloatware on, AOL, Vonage, etc etc. They burn these recovery discs by the thousands and don't have to deal with sending a separate CD/DVD to each customer.

 

yes, you are right... my point is this- you buy the computer- you have bought that OEM version. you should receive that disk. plain and simple. if enough people tell HP they will not accept this, they will change their policy. they used to send the OS, and they can do it again.

 

from what i know, hp has never sent out os disks that never contained bloatware, they have however sold computer with disks that included the installation image on recovery disks, but that was back in the day.
only company that i know of that sent bloatfree install disks was dell, but i think that has changed too and thier including it as a image on thier hard drives now, not sure.

 

Incorrect, my older R3000Z series included clean Windows XP CD plus a drivers/bloat ware disc which allowed you to pick what you want to install. This policy was changed to the no recovery partition/burn your own disc sometime in mid 2006. Also up until when I purchased my current V3000Z(Aug 2006) they used to offer the clean OS CD at a charge of $10 even though the system came with no discs.

 

dell gives you a clean OS disk and a driver disk. i don't think the driver disk i got from my recent dell purchase even had any bloatware on it. if you wanted to recover the dell to factory stats- there was a recovery partition on the HD for that.

the fact that these companies get away with not providing a copy of software you have paid for is just crazy to me. either give me a standalone copy of the software- or do not include it on the computer. is that too much to ask? no.

if you agree with me, join me in protest! i will not accept this kind of robbery from dell, hp, or any other company. demand clean OS disks when you order. talk to the manager. digg it. let's get this retarded policy changed.

 

With XP I waited for SP1 to be included in the base OS CDs and then bought a retail copy. I've since slipstreamed SP2 into it and burned an updated copy.

As for Vista, I'll probably get a retail CD for subsequent reinstalls at some future point in time. I do have the HP DVDs and an "Anytime" disk and a Acronis True Image Backup from V11 that won't restore.

 

My compaq came with two cd's- one operating system cd, and the other one contains all the drivers.

 

Yeah, it's annoying but they *did* provide you the software you bought... it's on the hard disk Luckily the work-around is pretty simple and cheap. You must remember that most of their customers will not even know that they are missing the disc, so it is a way to reduce the cost of the system for everyone. It would be nice if you could request them, but that would add another step to the supply chain.

So you're left with the workaround of getting the disc yourself, and the advantage is less expensive systems for all.

 

So that Recovery OS isn't the actual Vista?

 

No. For a full definition of each of the disc types, please see the Clean Vista Install guide in my sig. I have a section that describes the differences between all of the discs.

 

Alright, so basically I should save myself the $18, uninstall all the bloatware, then create the Recovery Disc myself, and then do whatever I want with it (as in installing programs, AIM, Firefox, etc).

 

Yes. save yourself the $18 and burn the recovery discs yourself. Creating the discs before or after you do the uninstall makes no difference, they are not related. If you remove things, create the discs, then use them to restore later, the system will be restored to the same point as when you opened the box, including any of the software you had removed.

If you really want to be clean, follow my clean install guide in my sig.