[sf-guy]

I was thinking of buying a pre-built system at Office Depot or somewhere like that. The system comes pre-configured with Vista Home and does not include OS install CDs. If I lose the OS, does anyone know if I will be able to re-injstall a licensed copy of Vista on the machine? The guy at Office Depot mumbled something about the machine coming with a "license key" and that that was all I needed but he didn't really seem to know what he was talking about.

Is it possible with some key/ID to download and burn Vista install CDs from the microsoft site or something to rebuild a system?

Any pointers most appreciated.

Thanks much!

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Just like you do when you buy a car, if in doubt, walk away.
Any genuine Microsoft dealer would give you the disk AND licence, no questions asked.
Big manufacturers like HP and Dell give you a disk as such, lest be it a recovery disk, but its still a method of getting the system up and running again.
You can't download CD images from Microsoft. If you do buy this one and need to to reinstall a few months down the line, you'd have to fork out again for a DVD and licence - the disks aren't available on their own.

[Neil Jones]

Just like you do when you buy a car, if in doubt, walk away.
Any genuine Microsoft dealer would give you the disk AND licence, no questions asked.
Big manufacturers like HP and Dell give you a disk as such, lest be it a recovery disk, but its still a method of getting the system up and running again.
You can't download CD images from Microsoft. If you do buy this one and need to to reinstall a few months down the line, you'd have to fork out again for a DVD and licence - the disks aren't available on their own.

[hfcg]

Hello,
In most cases, a new computer will come with a disc or have a utility to create one set of recovery disc.
The utility to create recovery disc is probally what the sales clerk was thinking of.