Upgrade he11

jonny boy

New Member
I am trying to restore my computer using system image to state before I attempted upgrades. To do this, I need a Vista 64 "system recovery disk"

Where I am (I'll explain how I got here further below):
  • The original Vista 64 install disk, and key are lost. Yep, we have dogs.
  • Multiple copies of image of prior O/S and all our files created using Windows backup & restore are available.
  • Operating version of Vista 64, restored using ISO from getintopc, is running on PC.
  • PC has ROM DVD (no R/W = no ability to create a system recovery disk on machine running Vista 64); I have other machines with other O/S's, but cannot create an appropriate system recovery disk using the Windows backup and restore features that will work from those machines.
  • Any time I think I'm getting close, I end up having to go through the "load drivers" menu as part of the system restore process. The O/S does not recognize the driver software from Dell on the Dell driver installation disk. I was going to download disk drivers in case those were necessary, but it is clear in browsing through the backup disk that the O/S has access to the images and related files.
Where I've been:
  • neosmart allow me to "fix" the O/S, but it does not provide capability to recover the image and thereby recover the system.
  • O/S download from getintopc running on PC does not have a capability to recover the image. I cannot create a system recovery disk using backup and recovery from that O/S as I have no burner hardware on that machine.
  • O/S download from torrent never completed. There have been no seeds for Vista 64 for days. Tried several sources.
  • recdisc program substitution doesn't allow burn to USB drive, and (again) the machine doesn't have a R/W DVD.
  • Every other version of Windows install disk that I have (Beta 64, Dell recovery disk 32, Vista 64 upgrade, Win 7, etc) rejects the ability to restore the image as "incompatible."
  • No other version of Windows that I've installed (all of the above, and more) allow me to access the image to recover the files. All want to use the boot from the recovery disk, hit PF8, load drivers, ...fail.
How I got here:

It is pretty common for us to encounter major issues when we upgrade. So, we generally avoid the process when we can. With support for Vista being virtually non-existent, we decided to upgrade the machine to Win7, and then Win10. I made three images of the Vista machine before beginning. I made the mistake of using Microsoft tools to create the image. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I made the mistake of using a Win 7 Ultimate disk to do the upgrade, knowing that previously one could select the target edition during the install process. Stupid. Stupid. Win 7 Ultimate installed without an option to chose Pro and rejected the Vista Pro key. When attempting to back it out to get to Win 7 Professional, the partition was reformatted and all data destroyed (no problemo, there are three safely backed up images, right... more stupid).

So, here I sit. I have three images of all the files I need to restore and apparently no way to unlock the images to restore them. Ever heard of a write-only-memory (a twisted pair of wires stuck into a block of wood)? That what MS has left me with.

All I need is the software to take an image and restore it. How?

Help. Please.
 
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