Obtaining hard CD of OS for older systems?

cali_stud,

You could buy the retail operating system with serial number, but they are more expensive than buying the Dell OEM operating system from the vendor I mentioned.
Vendor Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit $26.99
Retail Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit $79.99

I would just go out and buy a copy of windows

Thanks  for your reply.   I have a working Dell system at home.  It doesn't hurt to make a USB/CD of the Resuce disk  for this system before it is too late.   What keystrokes should i try at boot time, to get access to  restore partition  (which i assume has ability to make rescue CD of my system). ?   I tried  Control-F11,  which was suggested  in some threads here, but  holding down both keys after  power button does not do anything - simply boots into windows.  F8 works, but that gives windows boot screen that says  things like  "Goto last known good configuration" etc.

See this.

Thanks Chris.  I read through the documents by navigating through the link you gave me.  I wanted to try it on another Dell system i have  which was manufactured in 2011 and is running Windows XP currently.  According to the documents, i should be able to access  Dell repair partition  by holding F8 key during bootup. Upon trying F8, here is the boot up screen i see ->   Click here to see shared boot-time options image.

The second issue ::

Since, i did not see any option to enter Dell Backup/recovery manager, i looked into the partitions  using Macrium Reflect WinPE  bootable CD.  I see two partitions only, as seen in this URL->  image (click here).  But,  according to many threads i have read, there should be 3 partitions (including the C: drive that is visible under Windows XP).  Can you give your comments on what that small X: partition is for ?  I am planning to clone this disk using Macrium Reflect into a new SSD, as a backup now.  Will that new SSD be bootable all by itself ?

Here is my last question : Macrium (under windows xp running) says there is MBR disk1 containing 1 partition with 238GB.  But, under BIOS  i see an SSD with 256 GB.  What is hiding  in this difference of  256 - 238 GB = 18 GB ?  Why is Macrium-WinPE  not able to see that 18GB ?

Thanks Chris.  I read through the documents by navigating through the link you gave me.  I wanted to try it on another Dell system i have  which was manufactured in 2011 and is running Windows XP currently.  According to the documents, i should be able to access  Dell repair partition  by holding F8 key during bootup. Upon trying F8, here is the boot up screen i see ->   Click here to see shared boot-time options image. The second issue :: Since, i did not see any option to enter Dell Backup/recovery manager, i looked into the partitions  using Macrium Reflect WinPE  bootable CD.  I see two partitions only, as seen in this URL->  image (click here).  But,  according to many threads i have read, there should be 3 partitions (including the C: drive that is visible under Windows XP).  Can you give your comments on what that small X: partition is for ?  I am planning to clone this disk using Macrium Reflect into a new SSD, as a backup now.  Will that new SSD be bootable all by itself ? Here is my last question : Macrium (under windows xp running) says there is MBR disk1 containing 1 partition with 238GB.  But, under BIOS  i see an SSD with 256 GB.  What is hiding  in this difference of  256 - 238 GB = 18 GB ?  Why is Macrium-WinPE  not able to see that 18GB ?

If you want to do what you are doing for educational purposes that is great, if it was me --- because I am lazy, I would be purchasing a Dell OEM Windows XP CD on eBay for $10 and call it a day.

Chris, thanks for moving the thread. Unlikely that it will attract attention because i have already tagged your answer as solution.  Meanwhile, i found the answer to my question about the X: partition.  It  showed up only once - the very first time after creating the WinPE boot CD, and i chose to immediately startup  WinPE.   On subsequent boots from CD,  i do not see that X:  partition (which is actually a microsoft reserved partition, like a RAM drive).  So, my only pending puzzle is that last part about the 18GB that is missing.  I will try to post a separate thread about  further problems i face with this  Dell  SSD  which is actually  Samsung PM810 that is giving me headache in cloning it.

I remembered that hard disk manufacturers say 256 GB  to represent 256,000,000,000 bytes unlike OS and RAM manufacturers who use the real binary system (which would be 238 GB for them). So, this thread is done and i will start another to address other questions i have about this my system.