Vista Woes, what Are my Options?

About a month ago I bought a dual core 2 gig Acer with pre-installed
Vista Home Premium. I had all manner of trouble from day 1. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/windowsvista.html

Then it refused to boot saying the registry was corrupt. I can
examine the registry in service mode. It won't rollback, and it did
not come with a boot or install CD. I foolishly did not make an image
backup. I kept postponing until I had things working properly. The
vendor Compusmart has already charged me $50 without solving the
problem (and managed to damage and remove 1 Gig of RAM in the
process!)

I am dead in the water. The machine is utterly useless and the vendor
refuses to help.

Ideally I would like to get an XP CD, reformat, get rid of dynamic
partitions, and start from scratch.

Failing that, I would like to get a Vista Home edition CD and
reinstall.

It seems to me I already own a Vista licence so Compusmart demanding
another $460 for XP or $200 for Vista seems outrageous.

My old machine runs Win2K. My current plan is to use that, but Win2K
won't run IE 7, Media Player etc. I want a XP or Vista machine so I
can do software development and reproduce problems my users have.

What are my options? My budget is quite limited. All the money went on
the hardware.

Thanks for any suggestions.

your first mistake was (compusmart)

I would contact Acer they are pretty good let them know what has happened
and the troubles you are have with compusmart, and your system.

Acer will send you the disks you need to get up and running they are pretty
helpfull company

"Roedy Green" wrote:

> About a month ago I bought a dual core 2 gig Acer with pre-installed
> Vista Home Premium. I had all manner of trouble from day 1. See
> http://mindprod.com/jgloss/windowsvista.html
>
> Then it refused to boot saying the registry was corrupt. I can
> examine the registry in service mode. It won't rollback, and it did
> not come with a boot or install CD. I foolishly did not make an image
> backup. I kept postponing until I had things working properly. The
> vendor Compusmart has already charged me $50 without solving the
> problem (and managed to damage and remove 1 Gig of RAM in the
> process!)
>
> I am dead in the water. The machine is utterly useless and the vendor
> refuses to help.
>
> Ideally I would like to get an XP CD, reformat, get rid of dynamic
> partitions, and start from scratch.
>
> Failing that, I would like to get a Vista Home edition CD and
> reinstall.
>
> It seems to me I already own a Vista licence so Compusmart demanding
> another $460 for XP or $200 for Vista seems outrageous.
>
> My old machine runs Win2K. My current plan is to use that, but Win2K
> won't run IE 7, Media Player etc. I want a XP or Vista machine so I
> can do software development and reproduce problems my users have.
>
> What are my options? My budget is quite limited. All the money went on
> the hardware.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions.
>

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:50:04 -0700, loaderopp
<loaderopp@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly
quoted someone who said :

>your first mistake was (compusmart)
>
>I would contact Acer they are pretty good let them know what has happened
>and the troubles you are have with compusmart, and your system.
>
>Acer will send you the disks you need to get up and running they are pretty
>helpfull company

I'll see what happens. Someone told me that would be hopeless, and I
figured they having their head office so far away would not be
helpful. I am very impressed with the hardware. It is very nicely
designed.

I have had several acer laptops and i have always been happy with features
,design and service i have had from them. i had my case stolen last year and
all my disks for my laptop, acer replaced them i was pretty happy

"Roedy Green" wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:50:04 -0700, loaderopp
> <loaderopp@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly
> quoted someone who said :
>
> >your first mistake was (compusmart)
> >
> >I would contact Acer they are pretty good let them know what has happened
> >and the troubles you are have with compusmart, and your system.
> >
> >Acer will send you the disks you need to get up and running they are pretty
> >helpfull company
>
> I'll see what happens. Someone told me that would be hopeless, and I
> figured they having their head office so far away would not be
> helpful. I am very impressed with the hardware. It is very nicely
> designed.
>

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 01:47:16 -0700, Roedy Green
<see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>About a month ago I bought a dual core 2 gig Acer with pre-installed
>Vista Home Premium. I had all manner of trouble from day 1. See
>http://mindprod.com/jgloss/windowsvista.html
>
>Then it refused to boot saying the registry was corrupt.

I talked with Acer. There is a hidden large partition containing a
program to restore the machine to factory conditions. Unfortunately
this would loose not only data files but my partitioning and Linux. It
is a nice last ditch recovery, but I would refer to simply re-install
vista, rather than lose all data and config files and partitions.

"Roedy Green" wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 01:47:16 -0700, Roedy Green
> <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
> someone who said :
>
> >About a month ago I bought a dual core 2 gig Acer with pre-installed
> >Vista Home Premium. I had all manner of trouble from day 1. See
> >http://mindprod.com/jgloss/windowsvista.html
> >
> >Then it refused to boot saying the registry was corrupt.
>
> I talked with Acer. There is a hidden large partition containing a
> program to restore the machine to factory conditions. Unfortunately
> this would loose not only data files but my partitioning and Linux. It
> is a nice last ditch recovery, but I would refer to simply re-install
> vista, rather than lose all data and config files and partitions.

So they have change a couple things since i last used their help!!

I once used the recovery partition to reset my computer to boxed condition
it did not effect my D:\ partition other then i had to reload some software
so the windows registry could use the programs. but all my downloads and
saved file's did not change (but i should state) my laptop came with the
partition 80 gig divided into 2 40 gig drives.

I guess your other choice would be to purchase a retail copy of Vista, what
a bummer since you did have the oem version.
>
>