Vista Reinstallation Shenanigans

A

atlas337

Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2001
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715
I'm a vista n00b and am forced to make the switch from XP recently.

I recently purchased a laptop that came with Vista pre-installed. It did not come with a windows disc per-se, but came with a "Windows Anytime Upgrade" Disc. Can I use this disc to reinstall the OS using the windows vista product key that came with my machine?

Or did Microsoft finally say "no" to re installations?
 
Your laptop will also have come with a 'Recovery' facility, and most likely the capacity to create your own set of 'Recovery' disks. The manufacturer is obliged to provide that to you, and it'll restore your laptop to factory-shipped state. Windows and your 'bundled' software installed just as it was initially. Most likely the files for that will be on a 'hidden' or 'special' partition on your hard drive. If you wipe the hard drive partitions without first using the tool to create your own rewcovery disks that's your own bad luck.

Some laptops need special keypress combinations at bootup to acccess the 'Recovery' facilities. It'll be mentioned in the documentation.


The 'Anytime upgrade' disk will most likely be identical to any other Vista install disk, and thus capable of being used with your valid product key to install a 'clean' copy of Windows, without your 'bundled' software. From reports, most such disks are just that - a Vista install disk.

But there's always the chance that it's a 'custom' jobbie. No way to be absolutely certain unless you try it and find out for sure. If you've created that set of 'Recovery disks' you can always use them to revert back to original state if things go awry.
 
As in, you've already scrubbed the HD clean of data and repartitioned the thing? Or replaced the HD?

If the former then you're SOL and you shoulda RTFM. Perhaps you could get replacement recovery media from the manufacturer, but there's likely to be a fee involved if you can. If the latter then do you still have the original drive?


In any case, try that 'Anytime Upgrade' DVD with the 'Clean install guide' linked in the section FAQ. It's probably a Vista install disk just like any other and, if so, it'll work fine with the Clean Install workaround!
 
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