Hate being BUNDLED...

[vwgirl]

I just bought a HP Pavilion m400y (Media Center). Is there ANY way I can manually extract programs from the recovery cd? The amount of useless programs blows my mind. I'm having a difficult time removing the software I don't need and keeping the ones I do need. I've done a full system recovery more than I would like to. Seems like if I remove one program it causes another (one that I'd like to keep) to become unstable or not function at all. I would like to do a clean install of XP only but even that's not possible b/c it's all bundled.

My receipt for my computer itemizes each component on my computer listing the price for each. XP OS is one of the listed items therefore shouldn't I be entitled to hard copy on CD as if I had purchased it on my own????? It's not like I'm bootlegging it. I paid for it. (Sorry for the rant at the end)

[EvilRick]

You have a good gripe there, but you are getting a copy of XP. It's just bundled on that CD. It's perfectly legal for them to do it that way. It actually saves them money because they just copy it from a server and mass produce the CDs. They buy many licenses and use the same OEM copy of XP.

Being an OEM system builder myself, I give the actual OEM CD. I could take the time and create a recovery CD, but I figure I'll keep more customers if I give them more control of what they want.

You will probably fair better by looking for an OEM XP CD at a retailer.

I recommend MWave.com

You'll have to buy a piece of hardware since it's OEM, but that can be anything of little value.

Now to your application question. You should have a directory somewhere with a lot of .ZIP files or .CAB files. If you're lucky, there's a .TXT file as well that lists what each .zip or .cab file is. If not, you'll have to go through each one of them.

If you can't find anything on the CD, look on the recovery partition of your HDD.

[vwgirl]

I'm not religious but... BLESS YOUR SOUL for being one of the few system builders in a dying breed.

I have a legal copy of XP that I bought last year for my TP but the problem is that if i install it to the HP then I won't have the media center features. I wouldn't be so bent on the bundle issue if it weren't for the fact that HP gives you the choice of all or nothing when it comes to re-installing the softwares. Okay, it's a cost saving issue and that's perfectly understandable but give the people who keep them employed more choices than restore it all or restore nothing.

I tried going into the recovery partition and that just made my blood pressure rise even higher b/c it's LOCKED. I even tried to access it through MS-DOS. IBM didn't even bundle there's to the point where you couldn't access anything. Back when I had my IBM Aptiva I thought that was a pain to unbundle but that's nothing compared to HP. IBM was actually very flexible when it came to application choices.

I knew I should have stuck to my original plan of building a system from scratch. What happened to the days when a green monitor, saving to cassette and "10 PRINT ...." was all it took to make me a happy camper????

One last question... besides Symantec what are my options as far Uninstall programs?

[EvilRick]

I'm afraid I can't help you there. I've never used anything like that.

It's been awhile since I've used a Recovery CD, is there an option to drop to a command prompt during the Recovery process?

If so, you might be able to check out all the drive letters to see if the OS files are extracted to a RAMDRIVE.

I had an Acer Recovery CD that would allow you to do that. Mind you, that was back with Windows 98 *First Edition* and I was able to just copy the .CAB files to my HDD and install from a bootable floppy.