this is standard procedure for dell. they will replace the drive, and get
you up to a dos prompt (to demonstrate that it works). it's actually not
even MS-DOS, afaik, but FreeDOS. the dos prompt is simply to demonstrate
that the part works. after that it's the customer's responsibility to
install the software. this is where getting recovery CDs from dell comes in
handy. if you are a large corporate customer, you can pay to have dell
maintain an image and ship out drives with the software pre-installed, but
that will delay the ship date to about 2-3 business days instead of the
standard next business day for the blank ones so they have time to push the
image on to the drive.


"Marcio Watanabe" wrote in message
...
I'm an IT consultant, and one of my clients just had a problem with a
hard drive. Since the Optiplex was still under warranty, Dell was
called to replace the drive. Someone came and replaced the drive, but
the computer was left only with a DOS prompt--no software installed.
Is this standard operating procedure for warranty services? Shouldn't
they at least leave a working computer (with Windows XP and Office XP)
as it came from Dell?

--
Marcio Watanabe