reinstalling vista

[Surnis]

Hello,

My laptop is getting incredibly slow. a guy in a computer shop told me I should reinstall vista, after all, it's been 2 years since i bought it. It a manipulation I remember doing often with my old windows 95 pc.

The trouble is that Dell didn't give me a disk with the pc. it had windows vista home basic preinstalled, and if there was a problem, they had a part of my hard drive called recovery which should have restored my pc just like when it was new.

But that thing never worked, always stopped after a while with a simple "error" message.

Then, the computer guy told me that since I have a real license to my vista, I should be able to download vista legaly from the Microsoft site. But I never found anything like that. I saw the download for the trial of windows 7, and that's about it. (and I feared trying to install that one would just make it worse, since i'm liable to make a mistake somewhere.)

Was that guy wrong? Is there anything I can do to reinstall Vista without having to buy it separately? I don't want to use any illegal version that could mess everything up, especially since i'm supposed to have a real licence for it.

thanks for any pointers.

[karthi3765]

The trouble is that Dell didn't give me a disk with the pc. it had windows vista home basic preinstalled, and if there was a problem, they had a part of my hard drive called [COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif][COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif]recovery[/font][/font][/color][/color] which should have restored my pc just like when it was new.

But that thing never worked, always stopped after a while with a simple "error" message.

Then, the [COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif][COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif]computer[/font][/font][/color][/color] guy told me that since I have a real license to my vista, I should be able to download vista legaly from the [COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif][COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Microsoft [/font][COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif]site[/font][/color][/font][/color][/color]. But I never found anything like that. I saw the download for the trial of windows 7, and that's about it. (and I feared trying to install that one would just make it worse, since i'm liable to make a mistake somewhere.)

[Surnis]

Well, that's not really useful... unless it's in some code. Then, I can't figure it out.

Thanks anyway.

[gazzoid]

ask dell to send you a recovery disk,set advanced bios to boot from cd/dvd drive and run the disc,ive installed & uninstalled home basic/ultimate & windows 7 and just used disc to reinstall basic,if u want to try windows 7 just make a 40-50 gb partition and try it,windows 7 is more like a dvd/movie,music maker than an operating system,overblown gadgetery than anything else