Crazy Vista Issues!

Ok. So I have an issue that I don't know can be solved, but i hope you guys
can help me out.

I just got a new computer (compac) in febuary. it came with windows vista
home premium which was cool although it took me a while to figure it out
since I'm used to XP. So you all know the upgrade anytime cd comes with the
package so I got tempted to upgrade to ultimate. i figured it wouldnt hurt.
It probably had extra programs and stuff. So I chose to upgrade instead of
clean install. I wanted the option of being able to go back to the original
layout if anything went wrong. So i upgraded, everything went smoothly. But
Ultimate was nothing. There was nothing new or different from Home and i
noticed that all of my programs (even the ones that came on the computer like
Word and Norton) were all in a temp file. But I didnt realize that until
after I had cleaned out the computer. So I decided it wasnt worth it not to
have my programs and have to pay for Ultimate which didnt add anything to my
computer so i decided to go back to Home. I found that it was impossible to
go back because the program had clean installed. It didnt even give me the
option to upgrade. So i went back to Home off of the upgrade cd and now Im
still stuck without any of the programs that came on my computer and I really
need Word for my online english class. I know I'm a complete idiot for not
backing up my files. Is there anyway in the world for me to restore my
computer to factory settings?

Nik <Nik@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> Is there anyway in the world for me to restore my computer to
> factory settings?

Check Compaq's website for restore information but I think you're in
trouble. When you first got the computer did you make the FULL SET of
restore CDs they suggested? Probably you should have done that...

Hi Nik--

You need Word for your English class. You have to write some papers. You
can get Word downloaded as a trial for here for 60 days which gives you the
time to save up or beg a little more than $100 or less that it costs to get
a Student Edition of Office with your student discount at your campus book
store.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...741481033.aspx

Or Nik--

http://www.openoffice.org/


Google offers Writely.

https://www.google.com/accounts/Serv...homepage&nui=1


You can get an AV, firewall, a backup program, and spyware scanner here free
90 days by MSFT that will do a great job.

http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm


This means precisely what?

"But I didnt realize that until after I had cleaned out the computer. "

Did Office and Norton come with your computer? Is that what you mean? This
isn't much consolation perhaps but you can try Office 2007 for 60 days, and
you can put One Care on the box for 90 days free. Open Office is free and
will do what 95% of the word document producing population needs doing and
does it well.

Please elaborate what this means. You did what? After you saw these apps
in a temp file and by temp file do you mean Windows.old or something else?
What temp file?

Do you have these programs anywhere on your box now? How 'bout C:\Program
Files (or whichever drive)? How about in your program list?

"and I noticed that all of my programs (even the ones that came on the
computer like
Word and Norton) were all in a temp file."

Is this past tense? What particular folder? Have you formatted them off
the box? Uninstalled them?

Can't you simply reinstall these programs in a matter of minutes onto
whatever Vista edition that you have at the time if you have "uninstalled
them" or if not where are they?

BTW not preaching, but if Ultimate didn't add anything you wanted why even
consider buying it? MSFt and many other sites have the features of the
Vista editions and prices.

No one would consider you an idiot for not backing up because many more
people don't than do but a great investment for you would be Acronis 10
Home. It makes it easy. www.acronis.com

MSFT for all it's smart people have consumately done a beautiful job of
confusing the crap out of thousands of people over Vista upgrades and they
need to make modifications and revisions and more specific explanations so
that people aren't bewildered to theextent that they are on these
newsgroups.

It's definetly a What the hell were they thinking besides a lot of money in
their pocket at the Redmond campus when they devised these confusing
byzantine upgrade conundrums for Vista.

One of the Apple commercials that hasn't been aired that I'd like to write
would be an upgrade commercial and I'd put the Jon Stewart character in a
maze

http://www.cs4fn.org/images/flatmaze.jpg

or I'd put the big guy in the commercial tied up in a giant ball of wax,
taffy or a giant ball of yarn.

I would help you any way I could, so if you have more questions and can
clarify your situation please do. I did assume some way your programs are
gone because you have formatted over them, but I'm trying to offer you subs.

Student and Teacher edition of Office is your best bet, but at least I've
given you links to trials that will spell Word for the purposes of
English--that was one of my majors.

Also there is a student edition of One Note that is useful and you can have
it take all your notes on a portable PC with a cheap microphone.

Good luck,

CH




"Nik" <Nik@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:870E7014-8F83-483F-9E81-B09CE97EF98D@microsoft.com...
> Ok. So I have an issue that I don't know can be solved, but i hope you
> guys
> can help me out.
>
> I just got a new computer (compac) in febuary. it came with windows vista
> home premium which was cool although it took me a while to figure it out
> since I'm used to XP. So you all know the upgrade anytime cd comes with
> the
> package so I got tempted to upgrade to ultimate. i figured it wouldnt
> hurt.
> It probably had extra programs and stuff. So I chose to upgrade instead of
> clean install. I wanted the option of being able to go back to the
> original
> layout if anything went wrong. So i upgraded, everything went smoothly.
> But
> Ultimate was nothing. There was nothing new or different from Home and i
> noticed that all of my programs (even the ones that came on the computer
> like
> Word and Norton) were all in a temp file. But I didnt realize that until
> after I had cleaned out the computer. So I decided it wasnt worth it not
> to
> have my programs and have to pay for Ultimate which didnt add anything to
> my
> computer so i decided to go back to Home. I found that it was impossible
> to
> go back because the program had clean installed. It didnt even give me the
> option to upgrade. So i went back to Home off of the upgrade cd and now Im
> still stuck without any of the programs that came on my computer and I
> really
> need Word for my online english class. I know I'm a complete idiot for not
> backing up my files. Is there anyway in the world for me to restore my
> computer to factory settings?
>

Nik wrote:
> ...now Im
> still stuck without any of the programs that came on my computer and I really
> need Word for my online english class...

I could rant for hours about any school that locks its students into one
(very expensive) proprietary software package -- but I'll spare you this
time ;o)

Just be aware that there are alternatives which don't cost a penny, such
as openoffice.org. You can download the openoffice suite of programs
for free, and save your money for important things like beer.

Yes, it was in a windows.old file. I didnt like that. I went to go and clean
the computer out and afterwards none of my windows.old files were there
anymore. i tried to bring them back through tuneup utilities undelete but it
couldnt find the files. I think i wouldve been able to do system recovery but
all of my files from the Recovery hard drive was deleted when the computer
did a clean install.

I know I could buy Word, but I really just wanted to try to find a way to
restore my computer back to factory settings because I had Word for free.
Yes, Office and Norton came with my computer. I can't reinstall them because
they don't exist anymore. The were all deleted when I did disk cleanup. I
have downloaded a program called AngelWriter that I can type all of my
documents in but my teacher specifically wanted Word. I know now that I
shouldve made backup cds right when I got the computer but its too late for
that now. I can't exactly re download all the programs I used to have
because I'm on dial up. I don't even have Adobe Acrobat. My old computer came
with restore cds. I think i'll check compaq's website to see if the offer
them.

Thanks for the advice.



"Chad Harris" wrote:

> Hi Nik--
>
> You need Word for your English class. You have to write some papers. You
> can get Word downloaded as a trial for here for 60 days which gives you the
> time to save up or beg a little more than $100 or less that it costs to get
> a Student Edition of Office with your student discount at your campus book
> store.
>
> http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...741481033.aspx
>
> Or Nik--
>
> http://www.openoffice.org/
>
>
> Google offers Writely.
>
> https://www.google.com/accounts/Serv...homepage&nui=1
>
>
> You can get an AV, firewall, a backup program, and spyware scanner here free
> 90 days by MSFT that will do a great job.
>
> http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm
>
>
> This means precisely what?
>
> "But I didnt realize that until after I had cleaned out the computer. "
>
> Did Office and Norton come with your computer? Is that what you mean? This
> isn't much consolation perhaps but you can try Office 2007 for 60 days, and
> you can put One Care on the box for 90 days free. Open Office is free and
> will do what 95% of the word document producing population needs doing and
> does it well.
>
> Please elaborate what this means. You did what? After you saw these apps
> in a temp file and by temp file do you mean Windows.old or something else?
> What temp file?
>
> Do you have these programs anywhere on your box now? How 'bout C:\Program
> Files (or whichever drive)? How about in your program list?
>
> "and I noticed that all of my programs (even the ones that came on the
> computer like
> Word and Norton) were all in a temp file."
>
> Is this past tense? What particular folder? Have you formatted them off
> the box? Uninstalled them?
>
> Can't you simply reinstall these programs in a matter of minutes onto
> whatever Vista edition that you have at the time if you have "uninstalled
> them" or if not where are they?
>
> BTW not preaching, but if Ultimate didn't add anything you wanted why even
> consider buying it? MSFt and many other sites have the features of the
> Vista editions and prices.
>
> No one would consider you an idiot for not backing up because many more
> people don't than do but a great investment for you would be Acronis 10
> Home. It makes it easy. www.acronis.com
>
> MSFT for all it's smart people have consumately done a beautiful job of
> confusing the crap out of thousands of people over Vista upgrades and they
> need to make modifications and revisions and more specific explanations so
> that people aren't bewildered to theextent that they are on these
> newsgroups.
>
> It's definetly a What the hell were they thinking besides a lot of money in
> their pocket at the Redmond campus when they devised these confusing
> byzantine upgrade conundrums for Vista.
>
> One of the Apple commercials that hasn't been aired that I'd like to write
> would be an upgrade commercial and I'd put the Jon Stewart character in a
> maze
>
> http://www.cs4fn.org/images/flatmaze.jpg
>
> or I'd put the big guy in the commercial tied up in a giant ball of wax,
> taffy or a giant ball of yarn.
>
> I would help you any way I could, so if you have more questions and can
> clarify your situation please do. I did assume some way your programs are
> gone because you have formatted over them, but I'm trying to offer you subs.
>
> Student and Teacher edition of Office is your best bet, but at least I've
> given you links to trials that will spell Word for the purposes of
> English--that was one of my majors.
>
> Also there is a student edition of One Note that is useful and you can have
> it take all your notes on a portable PC with a cheap microphone.
>
> Good luck,
>
> CH
>
>
>
>
> "Nik" <Nik@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:870E7014-8F83-483F-9E81-B09CE97EF98D@microsoft.com...
> > Ok. So I have an issue that I don't know can be solved, but i hope you
> > guys
> > can help me out.
> >
> > I just got a new computer (compac) in febuary. it came with windows vista
> > home premium which was cool although it took me a while to figure it out
> > since I'm used to XP. So you all know the upgrade anytime cd comes with
> > the
> > package so I got tempted to upgrade to ultimate. i figured it wouldnt
> > hurt.
> > It probably had extra programs and stuff. So I chose to upgrade instead of
> > clean install. I wanted the option of being able to go back to the
> > original
> > layout if anything went wrong. So i upgraded, everything went smoothly.
> > But
> > Ultimate was nothing. There was nothing new or different from Home and i
> > noticed that all of my programs (even the ones that came on the computer
> > like
> > Word and Norton) were all in a temp file. But I didnt realize that until
> > after I had cleaned out the computer. So I decided it wasnt worth it not
> > to
> > have my programs and have to pay for Ultimate which didnt add anything to
> > my
> > computer so i decided to go back to Home. I found that it was impossible
> > to
> > go back because the program had clean installed. It didnt even give me the
> > option to upgrade. So i went back to Home off of the upgrade cd and now Im
> > still stuck without any of the programs that came on my computer and I
> > really
> > need Word for my online english class. I know I'm a complete idiot for not
> > backing up my files. Is there anyway in the world for me to restore my
> > computer to factory settings?
> >
>
>