Legal Install discs

[devans]

Hello,

I occasionally fix computers for friends and family and twice now I have wanted to reinstall windows but had no disc. I have the COA sticker on the side of the case but no discs.

Is there a legal way to acquire these discs?

I'm not interested in bit-torrents or other shady stuff.

Does MS allow you to download these as iso files for reinstall purposes? Seems like these would be made available since they are useless without the COA's.

Thanks
Daniel

 

[AntiZig]

if you have a COA like the ones I've seen on Dells, it's actually the windows product key, then you can use any regular windows xp install cd, just at the product key prompt you'd enter the key from the COA.

if there's some other COA, (like just a winxp sticker) that's useless, and you need to get recovery CDs from the computer vendor/manufacturer.