Posted on 02/19/2012 8:46:38 PM PST by Lmo56
I am going to be getting my Mom an Acer Windows 7 PC since her current PC is about at the end of its useful life.
My problem is that when I buy a new PC, I normally erase the hard drive by using DBAN and then load a clean image of the OS as well as the drivers.
That way, I get rid of all of the crapware that comes with the new PC.
However, with Windows 7, it seems that MOST OEMs do not provide the OS anymore.
I have looked on the Net, but have not been able to determine if Acer provides a Windows 7 OEM OS disc [they do have the driver downloads].
Does anyone know if they do?
Other than that, all I can see to do is burn a restore disc [with ALL OEM-supplied software on it] immediately upon initial out-of-the-box set-up, THEN removing ALL of the unwanted programs, THEN burning a second restore disc.
That way, I have the modified restore disk [in addition to the OEM restore disk] in case something bad happens ...
Any help is appreciated.
Side note: Acer seems to be more cheaply made and less reliable than some computers (though perhaps not as bad as eMachines). That isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the price is right. Instead of spending a lot on a computer, I typically buy an Acer or some other cheap brand and replace it every three or four years.
My Acer laptop cost me $350. After its three or four year run, I will buy another one. At that time, the new one that I buy will be a better and faster computer than if I had spent $1000 on one to start with (and still hoping to make it last for several more years).
My point: I think that it’s more economical and wiser to buy low end computers with the idea that you will replace them regularly. Today’s $1000 computer is not as fast or as powerful as next year’s $350 computer.
On the subject of install DVDs, OEMs provide the bits on the HDD. Then once you boot the thing up it starts reminding you to burn those bits onto a couple of DVDs. These are OEM images, but they are probably locked to the BIOS.
But on the subject of your quest, OEMs reduced the pollution of the OS quite significantly in last few years. I bought some HP boxes within last year, and I have a Lenovo thing at work, and they are very clean (esp. Lenovo.) They did come with Norton and such, but it's far easier to uninstall all that instead of wiping a perfectly good install clean and starting from scratch. Unless, of course, you just want to practice installing Win7. So perhaps your solution is for a problem that no longer exists. (I get a feeling that you aren't buying Windows boxen often.)
Yet another reason to steer away from doing a clean install concerns device drivers. Win7 does not come with every driver. The OEM slipstreamed them into the image already. Windows is not very friendly with identification of hardware, so unless you are willing to run lspci -vv you will have to take the box apart to find out what is in it. Or you can copy all the drivers from the OEM tree - but that's hard if some drivers come with DLLs or if they require registry keys set up before they even load (Intel is famous for that.)
All in all, I wouldn't embark on the project that you described. For me it's much easier to uninstall what I don't want. Time is precious, and there are better things to do than to dig into Microsoft's licensing and driver issues, self-inflictedly.
I had to do this with my new HP. I went to the HP site and found out how to order the disks for Win7. I would call Acer.
We're not talking about a major donation here, $5 a month. How much time do you spend on FR? Isn't that the best deal you've ever run across?
C'mon now, git 'er done, if some ham-n-egger like me can do this (and more) you can too. Donate!
I bought my Dell Win XP in 2009 brand new and while I was looking at the discs that came along with it, you SHOULD have:
1) the software disc which comes along with it
2) the OS disc
Apparently I misplaced the OS disc, and bitched to Dell about it. They sent me one...but I was the idiot, it was hidden in the styrofoam inside the box. So basically I have TWO licensed XP discs. Not intentional. You should call Acer and find out if they supply the OS OEM disc as the customer is required to have it...especially if you want to FACTORY RESTORE it in the future.
I recently factory restored my Dell I bought in 2009, and thought I lost the OS discs. Found out Craigslist sellers sometimes sell the restore/OS discs and there are also legit websites which sell the discs as well.
I bought a Gateway (owned by ACER) desktop on CyberMonday 2011. It had very little crapware.
It did have a Norton AV and Backup and a few other 3rd party, but none of them were actually installed. I deleted them and have had no problem.
You might try that before you reformat and reinstall.
FYI
Spoil her and yourself, get a mac. Seriously. I did two weeks ago because I got a brand new Toshiba and didn’t realize how badly windows 7 sucked/hadn’t improved upon vista. I was always thinking I was saving so much money but with a mac you can get great warranty plans and you’ll have the thing for 6 years, not 3. I’m so done with garbage pc’s, they’ll never get windows to work properly. Another thing, with Pc’s you have to spend another hundred if you want norton or a trustworthy anti virus program.
Go to the "Control Panel" and under "System Security" select "Back up your computer." Then, in the left vertical menu, select "Create a system image."
Other than that, all I can see to do is burn a restore disc [with ALL OEM-supplied software on it] immediately upon initial out-of-the-box set-up, THEN removing ALL of the unwanted programs, THEN burning a second restore disc.
Burning the restore disk a second time will probably just give you the same thing: Most OEM distributions create the restore disks from what the manufacturer originally installed on the "restore partition." And those I've seen usually limit you to 2 restore sets.
On the other hand, if you've got a utility like ghost, that should work, but early versions may not understand your disk drivers or the new NTFS.
Windows 7 installs really differently than earlier MS OSs. The boot DVD will partition and format your hard drive, then copy much of the installable Windows software to your hard drive BEFORE the installation of Windows actually begins.
Mark
Microsoft will NOT do that. The OEM serial number and activation only works with OEM software, which Microsoft will not sell to individuals. You might be able to get one from a system builder, but be prepared to pay the retail price for it.
Microsoft makes a TON of money off of their licensing, and they are very careful how they license systems.
They will not allow you to "mix & match."
Mark
I made the serious mistake of trying to upgrade my xp box to windows 7. My next computer is going to be a Mac. I am sick of Microsoft, they sell crappy software.
Remove the crapware, and THEN burn your recovery images. Should be easy enough.
Run Belarc Advisor (feerware) to see what apps and possible product IDs are on your machine. You may be able to use cd-keyreader to extract the MS OS product key.
Yes, I'm aware of Belarc, and that works well with XP - Vista, I don't know. But Windows 7 licensing is REALLY complex, compared to earlier versions. And you can't mix an OEM key with non-OEM installation media. And it gets even more complicated when you add additional computers. Once you get to a certain point, you can get volume licensing, but you need at least a minimum number of 2008 servers and/or Windows 7 workstations. Either way, they "check in with home" on a regular basis.
Just got off of a chat with Acer. Tech's name was Vineeth [so you can guess where he was located].
He said that the recovery partition on the hard disk will ALWAYS put the crapware back onto the disk after recovery ... Mother Trucker !!!
This is a very serious reply.
Why don’t you CALL ACER, ask them and get a reply directly from them?
Contact us at 1-800-910-2237, Mon-Fri 8:00am - 5:00pm CST.
Virtually no one provides OS disks any more; haven’t for quite some time.
Instead, a portion of your hard drive is set up as a “recovery disk”. That’s what you get now days.
Nope, there is no manufacturer today that supplies an OS disk with their PCs. They stopped doing that about the time win98 came out. I would imagine an agreement with MS is the reason. The answer in your case is to do what I did. Buy a copy of Win7 and then format your C drive and put Win7 on it. That is the only way you will be able to do what you are asking.
I’d just call Microsoft and see what they say. They have been good to me in other situations.
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