# Extracting Windows OS from a store-bought PC?



## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Greetings, everyone -
I've never bought a name-brand PC. I've always had either a shop-built or home-brew PC and a genuine Windows CD.
But I'm looking at laptops and will probly end up with an HP or Lenovo or whatever. 
Nowadays it seems all the PC's in the store have a "Recovery CD" or even no CD at all, just a "Windows partition" on the HDD. Can someone explain to me what you're supposed to do with that? I'm under the impression that you can extract from the partition all of the Windows data, and if you burn it to a CD you would basically have a Windows CD.
Am I goofed up on this? Can you create from a store-bought PC a Windows disk that could be used for Repair? Or are you stuck with a "Recovery" type of CD that wipes the drive clean and re-installs the original drivers no matter what you do?
I'm sorry if this is a lame question but I've never had to deal with it and the whole subject is a mystery to me...


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## chauffeur2 (Feb 7, 2006)

G'Day Bartender,

First up its not a lame question at all, in fact its a very good one, and I'll give you my interpretation for an answer.

Companies like Dell™; Hp™ [Compaq; Pavillion] and the like build these computer systems to a price, and to market trends and consumer demand. [So they say anyway].

When they pre-install the O/S [Windows®] the don't give you the CD as you have discovered, and all you get are these so called 'recovery' partitions and/or CD's.

I personally detest the idea of them, because my brother has a Hp Pavillion™ and he was in diabolical trouble a few weeks back with the dreaded BSOD.
Seeing he had the BSOD he couldn't even get into the darn 'recovery partition' either...so a fat lot of good these things can be at times.
I ended up buying him a 80Gb HDD and Windows® XP Home, installing it for him and then sent it to him in the post [he lives about 1,000 miles/1500Kms from me], so he could install the HDD activate it and then put his 'sick' HDD on as a "Slave" to get his data off it.
The moral of this horror story is..."Always get your Genuine Windows® CD _with_ your purchase"!
You can demand the retailer to get the manufacturer to send you the Genuine CD and not one of their 'make-ups'.
Before this gets into too much of a rant, in answer to your other question about 'cloning' a bootable CD from these companies installed files...I think that they have made them purely for 'Recovery' purposes, so I would have to say sorry, but no. Having said that I could be corrected though.
If you wanted to, you can buy OEM Windows® Xp CD's from places like eBay, where a retailer will "sell" you a piece of equipment [usually a mouse or something similar] with the CD to comply with Microsoft®'s regulations.
Hopefully this gives you an insight to your query.


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## crazijoe (Oct 19, 2004)

Usually the manufacturer will give you the option to purchase the media when you choose what OS you want (Home or Pro). This usually amounts to roughly $10. In the penny pinching consumer this is a value and opt not to get the cd. Most of the times the average consumer would not know what to do with the CD. 
The manufacturer does make the recover CD avalible to the consumer at anytime for a fee. Which, coincedentally, is about $10. 
One must realize that the average person that buys a "Mass Produced" computer is not the techie. They are average joe that does not care about recovery until the need arises. Which is normally not to often. When that time does come, the recovery partition is usually sufficiant. 
Also since the this average joe buys the "mass produced" computer, he likes the fact that it is a hook-it-up-and-go. Meaning the OS and all the software and drivers are installed. Most "Joes" do not know what an Operating System is or what a driver is. They know they have a computer. 

All it boils down to is simplicity. Power up the computer, a screen pops up that says Press F11 for recovery options. No extra disks needed. You know, the ones you cannot find anyway.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

Generally you can't do this unfortunatley because the OS is configgred to meet the needs of the hardware in terms of pre-installed drivers and software. This is often inconvienent becaue it restricts you from doing often helpful things such as repair installs, but, like crazijoe said, the majority of the users who will be using the computers will not need to use this feature. So if you ever need to reinstall the OS, you will have to do it through the recovery partition or the recovery disks provided. These will restore it to the factory state.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

OK, I'll have to dig into this further.
When crazijoe sez I can buy the media for about $10 when purchasing a PC, he means the manufacturer's recovery CD, right? Not a genuine Windows OS CD? Either way, the extra $10 would be worth it

These recovery partitions create an obvious Catch-22. If the hard drive isn't accessible for one reason or another, the partition is useless. Can a person copy the partition to a CD or DVD so that you at least have the recovery data (I assume this means the OS plus the drivers plus whatever other baggage the manufacturer throws in) stored safely off the drive?


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## crazijoe (Oct 19, 2004)

Usually you cannot access the recovery partition or modify it. You may be able to clone the drive in case the need arises.


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## hwm54112 (Oct 10, 2005)

Install cd from recovery cd. Don't think it's qute as simple as it states but might be possible. All the files have to be on the hdd or recovery disk. it's just a matter of getting to them


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## OMGmissinglink (Sep 24, 2006)

Most name brand pc's you can usually order through them the recovery disks if you did not get one with your pc, if the pc is equiped with a cd burner look through "programs" Burning or make recovery disks you can burn your own recovery disks.


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