Hope im in right section,i need to get a vista istallation disc,i have tried my own recovery one but it did not format my pc,i think i got virus off msn, wont even do system restore says theres a file corrupted on c drive scan now ,then it says cant scan while the drives in use?any help appreciated thanks in advance
when it says it can't scan while in use, it should give you an option to scan when you reboot. Does that fail also? I'm afraid it would not be legal for us to provide you with a disc other than the one you were supplied with (With one exception, if you were supplied with a 'system restore' or 'system recovery' disk that restores the computer to factory settings, you are legally permitted to demand a genuine windows installation disc from your laptop manufacturer). Last time I had to restore a vista machine it was a two stage process; first I had to use the recovery disc to create a recovery partition on the hard disk, then I had to recover from that partition. If your hard disk is having corruption problems then it may be damaged and need replacing.
if the recovery disc didn't help (asssuming you completed the process successfully) then I would suggest you might need a new hard disk. If you're confident with following instructions than we can help you determine if that is the case, otherwise you might want to call your local computer shop (or the laptop supplier if its under warranty).
I put recovery disc in followed instructions to take back too factory settings but when my pc restarted every thing i had on desk top was still there even games i put on for grandkids
I suspect that if the disc works the same as my windows 7 one did, she may of went to just upgrade rather than format, the advanced option is what I choose via this method...it's not that more advanced despite the name.
its a recovery disc, not a windows 7 disc. It should format the computer and revert it to factory defaults.
It should also reinstall the recovery partition,that probably came when new.I would imagine she has selected the wrong option somewhere along the line.This Vista one Ive got has 2 x dvd discs and you just swap them half way through.
I was thinking more along the lines of it creating the recovery partition, then you have to do something else to recover from that.
All I can say is what Ive done with this Laptop.If I use the recovery discs right now-the recovery partition is still there.But in the past(when I installed W7) the recovery partition(Vista) had been wiped.So I imagine the recovery discs reinstalls data onto the recovery partition irrespectively,in case user has deleted anything off there.I only would need to change to the 2nd dvd half-way through recovery,I dont need to select things or launch anything once it starts. She maybe selecting the wrong option at the start of the recovery process.I would try a few things before launching recovery,and shes not said if shes worried about losing all her files.
Last time I restored a laptop the hard disk had been replaced so there was no recovery partition. Using the recovery discs restored the recovery partition, I then had to use the recovery disc again and select a different option to restore the computer from the recovery partition.
OK,I thought it was the same HD you were using then.Youd think a local shop could maybe give here a Vista disc to play around with....
Thank you all for your help i got a friend to redo my computor as i dont think the disc they sent me was any good (well not the one i needed anyway) but all is well now thanks to you all again nice to know help is at hand.
