"Lost" Vista Media - Any Advice

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rabaroo

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Hi.

Last year I bought a laptop with Vista on it, the laptop arrived partitioned strangely and that + teething problems with Vista meant I formatted the HDD and downgraded to XP.

However XP wouldnt install properly (turns out as the laptop has a SATA disk and XP has no drivers for that) but in my "troubleshooting" i deleted the hidden Vista recovery partition, thus rendering my recovery CD useless.

I want to go back to Vista now.... I have a bone-fidey license key, but can anyone advise how I can get the software again without having to pay for it?
 
You may be able to buy a media pack from the laptop manufacturer, its usually a lot cheaper than buying the media as is. What you need is an OEM version of Vista, as thats the only version the licence you have will probably work with.
 
How about having a look here Click if you still have xp?
 
As long as you have a valid license key (on a sticker on the case of the machine), I can chuck a Vista DVD in the post for you for a small donation to Talkphotography?

Cheers,
James
 
What Moos3h says and

sounds like a Dell?
 
just a heads up guys, but if the OP is using a canon xsi that indicates he is stateside and will therefore be subject to USA laws and licensing. It would be better for him to obtain a native copy so he doesn't have to mess about with keyboard settings and layouts. Also, you could be getting yourself into trouble with UK export rules (technically) and the terms of your license.

I would suggest he goes back to his original supplier, be that a direct sell or one of the major retailers over there, such as circuit city.
 
Pops on Tech hat

Laptops are odd beasts, with lots of customised parts. I strongly advise you get an original manufaturers DVD, failing that enquire after a drivers disk> Example - I have a customer with a Toshiba laptop, and even Toshiba dont have the driver for the network and sound cards separatally (and thats speaking to the prod - development guys.. They do have it bundled into the product recovery DVD ROM

From month to month and revision to revision, the drivers are changing. Unfortunatally you cant just slap in the latest Nvidia drivers and hope for the best
 
we use XP at work with no problems with Sata, there maybe settings int eh BIOS to change (booting with Sata Support) this should then allow you to install onto a SATA Disk

as said witht he recovery partition it would be worth speaking tot he guys you got it from and seeng if they have a recovery CD/DVD to help you
 
whitey said:
we use XP at work with no problems with Sata, there maybe settings int eh BIOS to change (booting with Sata Support) this should then allow you to install onto a SATA Disk

as said witht he recovery partition it would be worth speaking tot he guys you got it from and seeng if they have a recovery CD/DVD to help you
Click to expand...

ditto - my xp machine is also running on sata drives, same advice, get onto suppliers/manuafcturers, see what they can do
 
It's not the fact that the drives are SATA that is the problem, it's that the controller isn't able to (or is not set to) enable IDE compatibility mode. You can still load XP onto a machine that doesn't have this feature, but you need to get hold of the AHCI driver and some machines (particularly laptops using cheapo chipsets) this can prove a problem.

Cheers,
James
 
I downgraded an HP laptop recently and had a similar problem. The issue I had was that for some reason the initial XP loading screens wouldn't show up so I couldn't hit F6 to load the SATA driver manually. I downloaded the driver and slipstreamed it, creating a new XP installation disk which booted fine.
 
Hi there

sorry for the delay I didnt get any email alerts of you posting before now :)

I am UK based and my laptop is a Toshiba, co-incidentally my parents have the identical laptop to me (Still on Vista) so I am toying with getting some software to clone their disk and apply it to mine....

Anyway from what Marcel has said I am not sure if any of the kind offers to provide me a copy of the media are "realistic" - I do have a valid license key, I can even take a pic of it if you like.... ive got a nice camera :p
 
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