DSE are not known for their immediate responses. I had a problem with DSE regarding a TV, finally got through to somebody in Australia, useless as things on a Bull. Ring the local manager of DSE and mention Consumer Guarantees Act. I did and then they were very helpful.

Ok very few manufacturers supply operating system or full recovery disks these days, they've found it's cheaper to write a recovery partition to the hard drive, the downside is if the drive fails.........What proceedures have you run to ascertain that the data on the harddrive is non-recoverable ? Also, some manufacturers put the operating system liscence on the machine inside the battery receptacle - try remove the battery to see if it's there...."Horace" suggesed the CGA. Well after 5 years theres no way that will fly. The time frames mentioned in the act are 'reasonable' and for a laptop it's generally considered 3 years approx. They DO get bumped around a bit and harddrives in particular are therefore somewhat more prone to dying. Your lack of windows software isn't really important as it's very easy to find windows operating system images online for download the real problem is the lack of a windows liscense

My wife got a new laptop a few months ago, sony, windows 8 also does not have a cd or liscence key anywhere on the machine. I made a system image so that if it fails I can re-instate the system.......not impressed with the lackof a windows liscence sticker though