Need advice, computer is down, no recovery disc.

[dstewart]

Ok, here's where I'm at-

A (long) while back, I bought a used eMachine. The previous owner had modded it a bit and when I got it, it was a decent machine. (P4 2.2GHz, 768 MHz DDR RAM, Geforce 6200A-LE, XP Pro)

When he put pro on it, he peeled the Windows sticker off the back, so there's no XP home software key, EMachines won't replace discs for anything built before 2006, and I don't have a windows disc at all!

And then my HDD went down.

So, am I just burned, or can I get a legit copy of windows somewhere for less than $100 retail?

 

[btk1w1]

Some lessons are learnt the hard way... I guess.

We all are students in this respect.

If only... you had created an image of your OS install you could have...

If your HDD is dead there isn't much hope of salvaging your operating system. You will have to shell out.

The key question you ask is the cheapest way to replace your windows operating system legitimately.

I would look at alternatives such as a Linux distro... that way you can do it for free and experiment too.

 

[dstewart]

Hard way, sure.

I guess I'm gonna try Ubuntu on it, see how that goes.

Time to check some prices & maybe build a new machine, I guess.

 

[Guest]

Buy the Recovery CDs from http://www.myrecoverycds.com/emachineSets.html