why dont vista give you reinstall disks? why just ones to reset to factory settings?

[joko]

all other windows gave you disks and many probs could be solved by reinserting the disk and resinstalling over the top - saving all files and settings... why cant this be the case with vista? especially when its know to cause many proba already?

or is there a disk somewheer that will do this?

thanks

[wideboy]

A lot of people didn't get discs with XP! That's Microsoft for you - the pirates aren't affected but you and I are!

[vehelpfulguy]

Microsoft used to allow companies to give out the official Windows disk with a PC.

Trouble is people used this "spare" Windows disk to install on to other computers and it pushed the piracy rates up.

So Microsoft stopped this, and now only allow them to give out a "recovery" disk or add a recovery partition to the hard drive.

If you buy a PC from a local PC builder they could include the OEM version of Windows to install on it, and then they should give you the CD afterwards.

I build my own PCs and buy the OEM version of Windows so always have the proper Windows disk if anything goes wrong.

(The OEM version of Windows is for people who build PCs as it does not include the fancy box and documentation)

[vehelpfulguy]

I should add that wideboy is right, this did not start with Vista.

It was happening with XP as well, so it has probably been like this for 4 or 5 years, maybe more.

[LeMarchand]

There is a "Vista Recovery Disc" available: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-re covery-disc-download/

As MS haven't shut the page down, I'm assuming that they have no objections...

[wideboy]

Thanks, Le Marchand, my son just bought a Vista computer and your link worked. Hope the 'disc' is OK when it is needed.

Has anyone used it?

[LeMarchand]

I've used it, and it did the job!

Long story, but was working on a PC that had a hard drive/RAID controller problem and after ghosting the old drives and transferring everything across to 2 new RAID-formatted drives there was still an issue with booting properly. Stuck the disc in, did the equivalent of a "repair" install and it solved the problem while leaving all the data intact.

Obviously you can't completely reinstall Vista to a formatted disc with this, it's for repairs only. (You will generally get a "Recovery" disc or partition that can be used to wipe the disc to it's "new" state - destroying your data and settings - with most new machines).

[wideboy]

Thanks LeMarchand. Glad to know it works - I'm sure we'll need it one day (hopefully not in the near future).