Vista 32 recovery disks

nightowl6900

New Member
I have windows 7 installed and want to go back to windows vista that is on my labtop. I didn't make any recovery disks so I downloaded yours. When I went to put in yours it asked me for a serial number. I don't have a serial number since this is a oem. I tried to use f11 but couldn't reinstall vista so I need a recovery disks since I didn't make one when I had vista installed. Any ideas what to do so I can recover my hp labtop and get it back to vista. Thanks in advance.
 
You can't use our disk. It isn't a free copy of Vista, it contains no installation files.
It can only be used to repair a broken boot process.
When you installed W7 it destroyed the HP customized boot and replaced it with a standard MS process, hence no F11 recovery.
HP gives you 3 options .
Recovery manager from Vista - (you lost that when you overwrote Vista)
F11 at boot - (you lost that when you overwrote the boot manager)
Use self-made recovery media (you didn't make any)
Now you have only one option if you want the PC back in factory condition with all the HP extra features and that's to contact HP and pay them for a set of recovery disks. (unless you have a friend with the exact same HP model who has made disks).
You could borrow a Vista DVD and install a vanilla version of Vista, but only if you locate the serial number from your PC. That is the licence which entitles you to a copy of Vista on that OEM hardware, without it, you'll need to buy a Vista DVD to acquire a new serial number.
You can't use the serial from a borrowed DVD. That would be piracy, and MS would not validate your attempt to activate the OS, without simultaneously invalidating the original installation.
 
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