Installing Vista without CD?

quackers

quackers

quackers

Soldato
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Hi all,

Basically, I've got a mate's laptop that he's asked me to sort out. It's a nice Sony Vaio, but the hard drive has died. He's bought a replacement and I've just installed it, it's got a license for Vista Home Premium attached to the bottom of the laptop.

Now, he's got no Vista disks for it and I can't find a copy anywhere.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can get around this problem I have, I can't think of anywhere I can get a copy of Vista Home Premium. I don't really want to download one from the torrents as you don't know what you're getting.

Anyone got any ideas?
 
if you are stuck contact me via trust and I'll post you a disk... I have an all vista 32/64bit disk its not cracked so does require a key (as you say you have)
 
Pretty sure the recovery discs will only work for an installed windows that doesn't boot or isn't working, not for installing it again.

You can download windows ISO's though, Would that be of any use?
 
Source a kosher Vista Home Premium OEM ISO image, burn to a DVD and install using that :). My Digital Life has kosher ISO images!
 
find the MSDN image with SP2 integrated, here's the sha1 hash so you know it's legit.

AAEE3C04533899F9F8C4AE0C4250EF5FAFBE29A3

(that's for x64 mind. but if you google it, i dare say you'll find x86 links if you need them)
 
Ha probably like a month for 2.9gb, after doing a bit of reading about this. Apparently all Vista install discs are the same, the version you get depends on the key you use. Is this true?

We do have legit copies of Vista in work that I can borrow for a night
 
Does this work for windows 7 aswell .....I've just brought a new hp laptop and it's got all sorts of crap on it and was wondering if I could use my w7 disc to reinstall and then put the serial of the laptop in to activate it
 
MADEinSTOKE said:
Does this work for windows 7 aswell .....I've just brought a new hp laptop and it's got all sorts of crap on it and was wondering if I could use my w7 disc to reinstall and then put the serial of the laptop in to activate it
Click to expand...
No you can't you need the HP 2.1 slic in your windows 7 disk to match that in the HP bios. What version of 7 do you have on laptop?
 
marmalade said:
No you can't you need the HP 2.1 slic in your windows 7 disk to match that in the HP bios. What version of 7 do you have on laptop?
Click to expand...

Not sure this is correct, SLIC is only relevant if you are doing an OEM pre-activation.

My understanding is that Windows searches the BIOS for a manufacturer string at a particular address and if this exists, the manufacturer specific OEMBIOS files installed with Windows convert the installation to a "pre-activated" installation (recovery disks supplied with pre built machines activate this way)

For normal activations, the key on the laptop should work with a standard w7 disk. No modification required. I have done this on many occasions.
 
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