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General discussion (archive)Vista restoration hell(7 posts)(7 posts)
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Posted September 18, 2012
Ugh. Acquaintance with Vista based laptop asked me to do roll back to a system restore point (his daughter used to fix it that way for him, frequently, in the past) after some software he installed brought it to a crawl.

Went for that. It crashed during the system restore --> registry corrupted. He's lost the installation disk; I don't own a vista disk; no option to use a disk to "repair"

Accessed Acer's restore partition to roll back to factory settings [asking it to backup the userfiles in C:\backup] ... the restore throws up an error message a good way in saying the image is faulty --> vista isn't properly restored.

Suggestions on what to do now? (Thank you!)
Post edited September 18, 2012 by Mnemon
Posted September 18, 2012
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Mnemon: Suggestions on what to do now?
1. Find out the edition of Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate ... x86 or x64).

2. Find out the serial key.

3. Download a copy of the exact same edition, install with the same key.

That's what I'd do. The key determines the legality of the installation, not how you acquired the media.
Post edited September 18, 2012 by Miaghstir
Posted September 18, 2012

2. Find out the serial key.
Right. Let's hope there's some sticker on the laptop itself. I doubt he's necessarily kept hold of any documents that came with it either :| ... will check tomorrow [it's downstairs and alarm in the house is turned on already :)] Not doing more, today.
Post edited September 18, 2012 by Mnemon
Posted September 18, 2012
You can get legal ISOs here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/w/microsoft_os/3317.2-3-microsoft-windows-vista-official-iso-download-links-digital-river.aspx

Online retailers tend to have the ISO for all versions of Windows freely available - they just sell you the key to convert it from a trial version to the full product.
Posted September 18, 2012
^And they use same OEM key 99% of time, so if you know what is the version that came with your laptop, you can find very same key that came with yours without too much hassle.
Posted September 22, 2012
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nmillar: You can get legal ISOs here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/w/microsoft_os/3317.2-3-microsoft-windows-vista-official-iso-download-links-digital-river.aspx

Online retailers tend to have the ISO for all versions of Windows freely available - they just sell you the key to convert it from a trial version to the full product.
Mhm. It all should work in theory ... do have the key etc. but - after downloading all this four times (twice through a download manager) and ending up with the .exe that comes with the two .win files failing to properly extract them (and, subsequently, the vista installation on the laptop I am trying to restore failing - it extracts enough to get far enough into the installation, before there are files missing, to see that it all would work in theory) ... it just seems the 64-bit of the English .win files on that server are likely corrupted.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good alternative source that is pretty much guaranteed to be clean? I know it's out there on torrent sites, but I'd much prefer something more trustworthy.
Post edited September 22, 2012 by Mnemon
Posted September 22, 2012
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nmillar: You can get legal ISOs here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/w/microsoft_os/3317.2-3-microsoft-windows-vista-official-iso-download-links-digital-river.aspx

Online retailers tend to have the ISO for all versions of Windows freely available - they just sell you the key to convert it from a trial version to the full product.
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Mnemon: Mhm. It all should work in theory ... do have the key etc. but - after downloading all this four times (twice through a download manager) and ending up with the .exe that comes with the two .win files failing to properly extract them (and, subsequently, the vista installation on the laptop I am trying to restore failing - it extracts enough to get far enough into the installation, before there are files missing, to see that it all would work in theory) ... it just seems the 64-bit of the English .win files on that server are likely corrupted.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good alternative source that is pretty much guaranteed to be clean? I know it's out there on torrent sites, but I'd much prefer something more trustworthy.
Believe me, if you find torrent with bunch of positive comments, it's 100% clean. 99.9% hate viruses as much as we do. ;)
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Vista restoration hell(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)