I recently got hold of a hard-drive off of a mate and i would like to install Windows ME onto it. I do not actually have ME on a CD-Rom, but pre-installed from when i bought my PC. Now i was gettin to wondering, if perhaps there may be a chance that this copy of WME that is on my HDD, might somehow be rippable to put on a blank CD? Maybe when these guys at the PC Shop install it, do they perhaps put the full executable clone onto the Hard-drive somewhere, perhaps in a partition? Basically if this may be possible, i would like to know how to get at the complete files and how to go about getting the OS that i rightfully paid for onto a CD so that it can actually be of some use to me here.

Can you help or am i simply dreaming that might be a possiblity?

u willl find that by law when u buy a PC with windows the supplyer has to give u either an originnal instalation CD or a backup which lets u install windows on its own. I think this is on the certificate which comes with new computers/windows to show that i have an offical copy.

I have dug out the old cd-rom which came with my Rig, after hearing what you say Tweakster. Unfortunately, it has on it most of the stuff that was pre-installed i.e. Drivers (Modem, Audio & Video), A Manual, and a Boot Folder which only contains a couple of standard Boot Disk and Restore files? No Win ME, which i did seem to remember was the case last time i looked. Do you think this means that i should be entitled to a copy of my OS on CD-Rom? If so, im gonna go kick some *** down PC World on Sunday cos im goin in there to buy some pieces for my Rig.

Thanks for the input so far

Can't he just hook the other HDD up as slave and XCOPY his current HDD to the new one?

Go to MS-DOS Prompt.
(Dont be scared! The mouse doesn't usually do a whole heck of a lot here!)
Type "XCOPY C:\*.* d:\*.* /E /F /H /R /K /Y"
This will start the copying process.
Once you are done with this the only things left to do is to remove the old drive, make your new hard drive the master and make sure the boot partition on it is marked active and you should be able to boot on your new hard drive once done!

What I would do is take the HDD out, and fit it in another machine before you have run the installation, and the data on the drive is still in its unfinalised state.

Just burn the files to CD. You should be able to boot a machine with blank HDD from floppy and then copy the files over, run the command

sys a: c:

to make the HDD DOS bootable and then boot from the HDD. Should work.

Well, in a way that is true, but they don't have to give you a way to "install" Windows, just be able to put it back on. I know of many PC manufacturers that give you either a "Restore Disc" which allows you to restore the computer to its original state(the way it was when you got it) or they create a partition that serves pretty much the same purpose. In both those cases you do not have the ability to "install" Windows because it is already installed. In most cases this backup will not work on another PC that is not of the same brand.

Hmm didnt know that, any idea why not ?

At first glance I would think that because its got a bunch of drivers for a different rig... But then if you get a Windows 98 installation on a HDD and shove it in another machine, when plug and play kicks in it just redetects everything and starts again.

Probably some lower level security that's built in.

Thanks

Thanks for the input guys