Compaq Holds Software for RANSOM

[gil11542]

I have a coworker that needed a new HDD installed in a Compaq presorio desktop. He brought me the tower and HDD and all the software included with the PC. After failing to get the recovery CD to work I picked up the phone and got ready for the pain of dealing with customer support.
After being told that the box only had a yr warr., and being transferred several times this hard to understand person started to tell me of, And I quote" wonderful support service provided buy a head tech for 6 months for only 59.95", I was lead to believe thatthis super tech was gonna go step by step on how to recover the sofware for the PC from the recovery CD. So I believe that the info is on this CD but has to be unlocked by the Head tech and I will have 6month window for the use of the CD.

Does anyone know more about this type of situation? Does it work or should I just buy a copy of XP home for my friend?

P.S. Will the 59.95 included access to all software that came with this computer?

 

[daniel49]

compaq software is crap anyway just buy an os and be done with them.
You will find alot of thier hardware is propriatary also and its possible you may experience driver problems on a clean install but probably nothing you can't overcome by searching places like driversguide.com it will just take a little work. Or if its just one troublesome piece (like a sound card or graphics card) you could always replace that componant.

 

[gil11542]

Done a little research and I think you are RIGHT ON. The disk that I have needs the D: drive from the orig HDD that is where all the stuff is, or I think for the 59.95 they will send me a set of disks with the complete restore data on them. I will never understand why someone would buy a PC from a chain store.