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@Casting Fool wrote:
I bought my Demension 3100 back in January. It arrived in an open box. CPU just bouncing around in it's little foam protectors. I tried to contact Support to report this but got India on the phone which was no help at all, and could not for the life of me figure out how to contact Support via the Dell website. (After all of the years I waited to get a Dell, this was the biggest disappointment of all. I expected top level support from Dell. I had no idea that Dell had dropped the ball.) I finally tried here.

Email was no good either. Every time I try it via the Dell website I get asked my info then get rejected because I'm not the right type of customer. Maybe I should have gotten an HP...

Back to my question, I wanted to create a recovery CD but discovered that the option is missing from the Start menu. I clicked on Programs, Dell Accessories, and there was no "Dell OS Recovery CD" option available on the menu. I can't find it anywhere on the drive. It's a one-time thing, does it disappear after it's used?

Now I'm concerned that my system was hacked during shipment and that an illegal copy XP is somewhere out there getting copied and handed out.

How do I get help from Dell on this? (I have a slight hearing disability, phone support from India is not going to be a help.)

That utility has not been installed since last July...

Systems shipped after July 15, 2004 came with Symantec PC Restore. This utility restores the computer to an "as-shipped" condition. If you haven't reformatted, repartitioned, or otherwise modified the master boot record, it should work. Click here for instructions about Symantec PC Restore.

If the Symantec PC Restore utility won't work, but still resides on your computer, a Dell customer has figured out some ways to get it to work again. Note - If you removed this partition, it is not recoverable, cannot be downloaded from the internet, and cannot be shipped from Dell. Click here for ways to fix Symantec PC Restore. Users have also reported that the partition can be restored with Ghost 2003, and Ghost 9 using the '03 capabilities of it. If you boot to the Ghost 9 CD, select Advanced Recovery Taks, select Utilities, then Restore Legacy Image it should work - but you want to verify the image before attempting the restore. It's in a folder called IMG.

Systems that shipped beginning in early 2005 ship without Windows XP. You can contact Dell and request a CD and wait for it to ship, see Contact Us at the bottom of the page.

So I should buy something from Rick's Marketing, then? I think not.

Thanks for the advice. My problem is that the system arrived in an open box and Dell's Support was too difficult to navigate to find answers to my questions.

I need a Windows XP CD in order to install a new HD, to install older apps that need an XP CD to run Setup, and for my own peace of mind. If this HD fails complelely (it's happened to me before) I need the CD in order to reinstall XP on a new drive.

It should not be this difficlut to get the CD from Dell.

I tried to make one from the i386 folder on the system, but too many extranious files ended up in that folder during my orignal setup and I'm not sure which ones belong on the CD. The i386 folder is roughly 1GB. I can't fit that on a CD.

How do I get a CD from Dell?

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@Casting Fool wrote:
So I should buy something from Rick's Marketing, then? I think not.

Thanks for the advice. My problem is that the system arrived in an open box and Dell's Support was too difficult to navigate to find answers to my questions.

I need a Windows XP CD in order to install a new HD, to install older apps that need an XP CD to run Setup, and for my own peace of mind. If this HD fails complelely (it's happened to me before) I need the CD in order to reinstall XP on a new drive.

It should not be this difficlut to get the CD from Dell.

I tried to make one from the i386 folder on the system, but too many extranious files ended up in that folder during my orignal setup and I'm not sure which ones belong on the CD. The i386 folder is roughly 1GB. I can't fit that on a CD.

How do I get a CD from Dell?

Try reading what I posted.  It says very clearly in the last paragraph what to do.  It also tells you in first paragraph that you hav no utility to create a disk.  And it says nothing about buying anything from me. 

I did read what you posted, but I jumped to the wrong conclusion when I saw your add at the bottom of your post. I just visited your website. My apologies for the first statement in my post.

I'm waiting on a reply from Customer Support, though I have little hope that the answer will help.

Running Symantec PC Restore will not do what I need. If the hard drive crashes completely into a non-responsive state, or if I upgrade the harddrive, I will not be able to reinstall XP without the CD. I have a few older programs that will not look anywhere but on the CD for drivers.

And I'm still a bit ticked off with Dell that my new 3100 came in an open box with almost no packing material in it, and I can't get a respone from them on the topic.

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@Casting Fool wrote:
I did read what you posted, but I jumped to the wrong conclusion when I saw your add at the bottom of your post. I just visited your website. My apologies for the first statement in my post.

I'm waiting on a reply from Customer Support, though I have little hope that the answer will help.

Running Symantec PC Restore will not do what I need. If the hard drive crashes completely into a non-responsive state, or if I upgrade the harddrive, I will not be able to reinstall XP without the CD. I have a few older programs that will not look anywhere but on the CD for drivers.

And I'm still a bit ticked off with Dell that my new 3100 came in an open box with almost no packing material in it, and I can't get a respone from them on the topic.

Apology accepted.

Next time don't accept an open box, refuse the shipment.  You're not going to get a satisfactory response on the open box IMHO. 

As far as the CDs go, simply chat, email, or call for them.  Mention the words "Media Reduction Initiative and be polite but insistent that you get sent ALL CDs.

Thanks, Rick. I'll do that when they respond to my email message.

BTW, my son put in a good word for you with me. He just got an Inspiron 600M notebook after his Inspiron 8200 notebook died. He appreciated your help.