Posted: 11/2/2010 3:38:54 AM EDT
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The wife and I both have Vaio laptops, neither came with a Windows disc.
Is there a way to have it burn a reinstall disc? Made a recovery disc, but I don't believe it's the same thing. For that matter, I hate Vista, any way to downgrade my Vista to XP without having to go and buy XP? Thanks in advance, my PC skills are getting rusty 
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Windows 7 is your friend.
link to UBCD Dont know how computer proficient you are, but this URL links to the Ultimate Boot CD. I have it on USB and can get into any XP or Vista Computer simply by booting into the bios, changing the boot order and booting up the USB, which has a copy of XP and a variety of utilities, one of which is to change the admin password on the original copy of windows installed on the C: drive. Also gives you access to all drives on the computer as well as the option to re-install windows. So in a worst case situation, you could use this to copy your C: drive to DVD and reinstall windows then pull your records off the DVD. This isn't a backup, more of a tool for recovery. Sometimes the Master Boot Record gets corrupted and this is an easy way to fix the problem. I use a 1 terabyte external drive to do frequent backups. I would recomend this to anyone. Again if your computer goes down/ hard drive fails, you can replace the drive, boot into the external drive, and use the utilities to completely restore your files. I used to do backups to multiple DVD's which took forever. And in one case, one of the DVD's failed and my backup would not go through when my last notebook died. One caution, UBCD is very powerful. Do as much research and learn about all of the utilities as much as possible before using. After you see what is possible, you'll probably be a little shocked at how easily a windows computer is manipulated. |
The problem with OEM license keys from the likes of Sony, HP, Dell, ect ect is those keys will NOT work with a genuine Windows install CD. I'm pissed off that Dell thought it was a good idea to go back to that recovery partion shit and is no longer shipping the OS disk. 
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Quoted: The problem with OEM license keys from the likes of Sony, HP, Dell, ect ect is those keys will NOT work with a genuine Windows install CD. I'm pissed off that Dell thought it was a good idea to go back to that recovery partion shit and is no longer shipping the OS disk. Next time check the box for them to send you the media when ordering. It cost us ~$2.50. If your HDD goes tits up, you can get a new one with the media preloaded on it already from Dell. |