As promised, I said I would try and get the official Microsoft position on whether computer builders are required to supply Windows CD's, Restore CD's or recovery partitions on the hard drive. After consultations with my MVP guy at MS, it seems that computer builders are not required to supply anything at all beyond a proper Certificate of Authenticity and a preinstalled operating system.

Here is the OEM licence agreement:

http://oem.microsoft.com/downloads/s...SB_License.pdf

Armed with that information, I would strongly advise anyone purchasing a new computer that comes without any means of recovering from a damaged Windows installation to invest in some imaging software, such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image and burn an image of the OS to CDR as soon as possible after getting the PC. It still won't allow any of the repairs that can be done with a proper Windows CD, but the other alternative would be to have to go and buy a retail Windows CD if the installation becomes seriously damaged or unbootable.