Is OEM Recovery a Lost Art Part 1

Is OEM Recovery a Lost Art Part 1

Welcome to the first blog post of 2026, today I’m gonna explain why I think OEM recovery is a lost art, and how you can fix that in a two part blog. I am so sorry for the delay in getting this to you as I was super busy with life last week.

If you’ve ever bought a computer other than a Apple one off a store shelf, it’ll have shipped with Windows with the OEM software customisations, To clarify, this is going to a 2 part blog with Part 2 coming out 2 weeks from today, the 28th January Today’s focus is on the Vista - Windows 8.1 era, Q1 2007- Q1 2015 is the timeline for this part. We’ll be doing Q3 2015 - Q3 2025 in part 2.

The 3 cases we’ll be looking at today are the HP Compaq 6510b, the Lenovo Thinkpad T410, and the HP r127nl, or the HP 15 Notebook PC series of laptops.

The reason why I set these as the individual cases for this part is because they’re the first Vista, 7 and 8.1 era machines I know of, plus there’s a lot on YouTube about them and to come to mind when I was thinking about machines to use as cases.

Before we get going, we need a few ground rules.

1. They need to be some sort of Intel cpu in them, anything i3, i5, i7, C2D is fine, AMD’s weren’t so prevalent in those days as it is now.
2. Adding to the main rule, it has to have been released after 1st February 2007 and no later than 16th December 2025

Our first case is the HP Compaq 6710b, released in mid 2007, the beginning of our 18 year timeline, I decided on this as it was the first one that came to the head. Shipping with 2GB ram, which was a lot back then. (looking at you, ram shortage), a C2D, and a traditional mechanical hard drive. As far my knowledge is aware of, I couldn’t find any evidence of a OEM OS install online, on Google and documents online, but the MJD videos featuring it are the best ways to get info on it:

Our second case comes in the form of a Lenovo T410, which I’m not aware of any release date plus the release of this blog is nearly a week overdue, as of my knowledge I don’t know any of the specs so I’ll appreciate any user contributions

Lastly, we are arriving at HP Station to look at the HP 15-r127nl or the HP 15 Notebook PC. I have to be thankful to the people on YouTube making content about it, regarding hackintoshing + any other sort of content on it especially TCG96’s videos on it, which I'll link here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8y214wNF7WXI9X3ekzstBH3KXGtGwOte&si=7lwLLS2oeydQR0ns 

I also want to state I am so sorry on the delay getting this to you, I will release the next part, 2 weeks from today, the 28th January. I will be posting something other than this saga.

-MCR