New pc and recovery disks

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A friend of mine bought a new PC the other day from her cataloge. (I would have advised against this but hey)
Now she had a problem where it was locking up when ever she tried to open and Windows Apps. The PC came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium, but she dosent have any recovery disks or teh Vista CD.
There are instruction included with teh PC on how to reset the software back to factory settings hould anything go wrong. This basically means hitting F8 on boot and selecting the repair option from teh Windows menu. Now while this would be ok for basic issues, if she can't access teh menu due to a problem at that point, she has no way to re-install Vista. No recovery disk and no Vista disk, and told they not supplied.

What i want to know is, what is the legal standing with suppliyng Recovery Disks and not the Vista CD, Shouldnt she be entitled to teh Vista Disk as the cost of teh licence for Vista is included in teh cost of teh PC?
I know PC buiklders can clone disks Using volume liecene keys, but surley, if they selling the Pc to teh public,a recovery disk should be included, or should teh Vista disk be included? This seems a grey area to me, and i just cant see how PC suppliers can get away with it. (and yes i know most do it because it means you go to them when you have a problem, for which they will charge, especially as they wont cover software issues under warranty!)

 

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Basically she needs to request a recovery disk from the manufacturer or send the PC back to them were they will resolve it.

I don't think they have to have a recovery cd with them, my brothers Dell had a partition for recovery. If the problem started before he could get into the recovery partition menu then he can send it back to dell for them to fix.

 

As I understand it there is no legal requirement to provide the disks. The only requirement is that it ships with an OS installed. I would contact the manufactures a call they may provide the disks for a cahre - not ideal but better then nothing.

 

Having been a system builder and part of the MS programme, unfortunately the situation above is quite legal. Personally I think it sucks and have always provided my customers with the original oem disks.

What I can tell you is that *most* manufacturers operating as you describe will either provide disks or get the consumer out of their predicament BUT usually only within a certain time after the computer has been purchased. This is not restricted to within 12 months or anything to do with Sale of Goods Act etc etc, it is within the terms of their own warranty. I have seen some restricted to within 30 days of purchase.

In the first instance the best way forward is to check all the documentation and see if there's a contact number for the manufacturer. Some are happy to help, other less so.

Good luck !

 

Bottom line is, I believe that they are required to provide some method of recovery, but that doesnt mean the disks necessarily. In this case, they have provided a boot option to restore the OS.

In all honesty though mate, if the PC were ever unable to get that far in (given its the first step after the bootstrap), then its unlikely to be a software issue. Its much more likely to be a hardware issue. In which case the oem disk and or recovery disks would be utterly useless.

There is, of course, nothing to stop you using another oem disk with her license, in order to reinstall Vista, should the need ever arise.

 

If its an Acer PC they don't come with any recovery cds, they have a hidden partition, however the e-Recovery software lets you burn a set of cds from the hidden partition.

 

If it's an HP you can special order a Vista recovery DVD.