Does Dell sell WinXP replacement disks?

[Killrose]

Looking at buying a used Dell with a swipped clean hard drive. Has WinXP COA on the bottom. Can I get a operating system disk form Dell? and how much?

Got tired of being on hold with Dell when I called them.............

Had a friend with an Acer and was able to get a Vista recovery disk from them for $20 once upon a time.

 

[lxskllr]

Don't know, but a disc shouldn't be hard to come by. There's tons of those things floating around, both online, and real life. I might have one in a box, but I don't know. I'm a packrat, and save everything :^D

 

[Matt1970]

It may have the recovery partition still on there.

 

[Away]

You could most likely get one through the For Sale/Trade forum here.

 

[gsaldivar]

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=dell+windows+xp+CD

 

[Slugbait]

Has WinXP COA on the bottom.

That number likely won't be accepted by WGA if you manually enter it during install from a retail disc or generic OEM disc. You will need a Dell disc.

I'm pretty sure Dell stopped providing XP restoration discs a few years ago.

As Matt points out, it might still have a recovery partition, but you'll likely still need a restoration disc to boot and access it. But back in the XP days, a lot of machines didn't have recovery partitions, since the restoration image could easily fit on a CD.

I sometimes see Dell discs at garage sales...usually a buck or so. Unfortunately, garage sale season doesn't start for another two months.

 

[Dahak]

That number likely won't be accepted by WGA if you manually enter it during install from a retail disc or generic OEM disc. You will need a Dell disc.

not really I have uses generic oem disks to restore os on many oem machines from hps, lenovo, toshiba dells etcs. and they have all accepted the keys fine and activated fine, few isolated cases where I had to call the activation line but 5 min and its activated.

The only issue would be is you have to use an oem not a retail or upgrade disk, or if you try to use an oem disk from another vendor ie an hp disk on the dell machine.

 

[boochi]

There is a torrent floating around for Dell XP OEM w/ SP2 which you can easily slipstream to SP3. I don't think it is really a grey area since you will have Dell hardware.

 

[nitrous9200]

OEM keys on the COA will definitely activate with standard XP OEM discs (not manufacturer branded). I've probably done hundreds of OS reinstalls that way and it's never failed. Of course, using a manufacturer's will allow you to bypass entering the key and going through the activation process, but that's not much of a hassle.

If you can't find any XP discs anywhere, just google for untouched ISOs and you'll surely find some. I don't know what version you have (home or pro) but I've got a Dell-branded Pro disc with SP3 if you want me to make an image of it and upload it someplace. That couldn't possibly be illegal, because you have a right to a license of the software that was provided with your machine; the disc is not where the costs of licensing go.