Liu's information is incorrect.

Microsoft REQUIRES OEMs to provide SOME means for a customer to
reinstall Windows. The OEM has a choice of which way. Both a restore
partition and a CD/DVD media are acceptable to Microsoft, so any given
manufacturer may use either or both methods (and both methods on the
same laptop if desired).



liu wrote:
> On Jun 29, 3:16 am, "M.I.5¾" <no....@no.where.NO_SPAM.co.uk> wrote:
>> "liu" <spamfree...******.com> wrote in message
>>
>>> Also, I would not buy a SONY notebook again. They don't provide you
>>> with an OS installation DVD. All the drivers, OS is located in a
>>> hidden partition that takes up the space from user. If your HD is
>>> broken, how can you recover? How about other manufacturers? Do they do
>>> different?
>> Don't blame Sony for this. This is down to Microsoft. The licensing of OEM
>> versions of Vista require the OS reinstallation be placed on a separate
>> partition of the hard disk. You cannot even make a backup CD (or DVD) of
> ...
> Then why can Dell provide the DVD? Well, the purpose of this post is
> to see if anyone has installed WinXP successfully on this SONY laptop
> so I can do the same.
>
> Thanks,
>