Do HP desktops provide OEM or restore disks?

Cold Canuck

New Member
We're purchasing 5 or 6 new PCs for an office, but are having to "downgrade" to XP due to other software restrictions.

Could I take the win7 that came on one of the HPs and use it on a self-assembled PC?

I hate to just pay for win7 on all those PCs and have the software and licenses sitting, collecting dust, ya know?
 
You can't take the OS that would be installed on those and put it on another PC. If you need XP why didn't you try finding a company that still offered XP or someone that could have built you XP machines instead of windows 7?
 
Actually you can transfer the key over if you want. Just contact Microsoft and talk with someone there for a couple minutes. I did this with some Dell computers, transfering copies of XP (came with Pro, we loaded an image with XP and all the required software)

I believe HPs typically came with a restore partition, but I've not worked on many recent ones. It should be easy enough to check though... Just visit a local computer dealership and see how the drives look. Sometimes it'll have a restore partition visable, sometimes it wont. If not, see if the total drive(s) space add up to the primary hard drive, taking into account the whole 1000 = 1024 (ex 80GB = ~74GB :P)
 
Actually, according to the licence, if you don't agree with the EULA you are allowed to take it back to the store where you bought it and have them remove the OS and refund its price.

I read it on a news article somewhere... I can look it up if anyone's interested.
 
You can't take the OS that would be installed on those and put it on another PC. If you need XP why didn't you try finding a company that still offered XP or someone that could have built you XP machines instead of windows 7?

The restrictive software we use requires that the workstations be brand name, not white box....otherwise I would have simply built them myself.
 
Other than the ability to encrypt files and join domain and group, there doesn't seem to be much difference between home and pro...or am I missing something important?
 
To answer your question, No they dont come with discs. They do however have installed software that lets you create the disks. The discs made are a copy of the original state (when pc was made) of the computer. The pc might also have a hidden partition of the backup that you can Restore from.
 
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