There's a few things being overlooked here...

When a manuf. cranks out a ton of machines with all the same specs and exact hardware it's a simple thing to produce a million XP/Driver/Restore CD's for those machines...
However with all the rapid changes in hardware/components and machines having relatively short production cycles this became a miniature nightmare for them to keep up with.
A CERTAIN Model # PC could have 2 or 3 different CPU's; 5 to 8 different MBoards and who knows how many different onboard chipsets.

So consumer demand for the latest and greatest actually drove the industry to find another solution which was to take a clone of the machine components and OS at the time of production and place all that on a hidden restore PARTITION.

As to them sometimes being hidden partitions that would not normally be able to be manipulated by those without knowledge of the proper tools out there they were simply protecting the idiots from their own inquisitive nature.
After all we all know a certain amount of people who don't understand the simple premise that after a format or Restore their data is gone and there's nothing they can do about it without spending beau' coup bucks for a data recovery service.

End of mini-rant.Never thought I'd say this - but guess I'll have to agree to DISAGREE with Patio on this one.  I still don't see how the issuance/delivery of a reinstallation disk with s purchased copy of Windows is an imposition upon a boxmaker, or how its omission is a favor to the buyer.  But hey - it is what it is - in most cases, the disks will never be forthcoming, no matter who thinks what.I think the main reason they don't supply an actual Windows CD/DVD is because they would ultimately have to pay for it (although it really is only the license that needs to be paid for...). Oh well, I don't plan on buying a manufactured PC anyway.Get a Windows ME bootdisk off www.bootdisk.com
and burn it to a disc. Next, restart the computer with
your newly burned disc in the CD-ROM drive.. Yes, it
will boot into MS-DOS.. although it will be A:\..

Run fdisk.exe and change the appropriate fixed disk
if NEEDED.. then select the 'delete' menu option.. (usually
3) and delete a non-DOS partition.. it should be listed there.
If not.. I dont know what to tell you.. -.-;I could just borrow a friend's CD/DVD or download a bootlegged copy and just use my LEGAL key to run, provided that the key version matches the cd/dvd version of windows.

I''m not saying you pirate the software, you'd just be getting the missing software that you have a legal license for