Vista - What am I missing, if anything . . .

Nov '07, I purchased a 6 mo. old eMachine T5062 from a guy. It has Vista Hm 64. The reboot CD's he gave me are for another eMachine...he swore they were what came w/system. PC maker wants $$$ to send correct ones. Fooey on that!

Now...I wrongly reinstalled the OS when I got into trouble and couldn't work my way out. I lost the MS Office 2007, and every other program installed at factory...except there is a copy of everything (I think) on Drive 'D' labeled Recovery. I don't know enough about files to be able to sort thru to find my 'Office' or anything else.

In addition, I have not installed the Vista upgrade that came with it. And have not installed the SP1 update, as I have heard from other boards it causes more problems than it fixes.

I'm not having any problems w/any programs or the machine, except there's a LOT I want to learn re Media Player, Pictures,Recording online, etc.

The only problem I have is when I first got it, I could copy/paste pictures as well as text in MSWord, but now it doesn't work, except on very rare occasions.

Anyone have time to help a lil ole lady cross this hump in my road?

First you can try a system restore. Pick a point before you had your troubles and go from there. If that does not work you might want to try system format. If you have any programs that are not part of the factory system applications, burn them to a cd/dvd for later installs.
There should be some sort of system manager, system recovery disc creator, as its a part of vista. this eliminates the need for MS to send recovery disc. This program will allow you to create a set of recovery discs so you can reset your computer to like it was when it came out of the box. Click the windows start tab and then type system recovery disc creator. Then just follow on screen prompts.

Bass - System restore works for the *current* OS - Learner has already *reinstalled* (and that most likely involved a format as all the applications are gone) the OS - hence System Restore will not work.

If there is a recovery partition on the system, then you should have no problem restoring all the apps and such by using that partition - however, you *will* need the correct eMachines disc.

You might try taking to the original owner again - most people don't pay attention to the restore discs, and he probably has them hidden in some other spot and has forgotten about them - otherwise, you will be forced to buy them from eMachines.

You could also try searching the Internet to see if any kind soul has them available for download....

Thanks johngalt...any way I could show you a pic of that Recovery file and you could pick out my Office file(s)? or is that asking tooooooo much?

Thanks, bassfisher, am checking all this out...my gut reaction was don't do anything until you hear from others...which was right...see johngalt reply. I can see this is going to take some time...

Hello Learner.

If the D: "Recovery" partition is intact you may be able to recover the machine to
the way it was when it left the factory, you don't need the discs to do this.

The way it usually works; start with the machine off, press the power button and
start tapping the F11 or F12 key (trial and error) this should bring the "Recovery Option"
from there just follow the prompts.

I hope you can get it sorted out, keep us informed!

This is incorrect, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you install SP1!



Later Ted

Well, Bare Foot Kid, I installed the SP1. Then I went looking for restore dates and guess what? None are accessible!
Thanks.

Please read this again; you don't want "System Restore" you want "System Recovery" (right)?


Later Ted

In addition, I have an item in my 'Recent Items' pane, that reads, "WMP Codec.rtf", and my Win.MediaPlayer sounds like "heck"!

When I tried to use Word Pad last night with IE open, the mouse would only operate on left click...couldn't copy/paste...nothing.

Right....duhhhhhhhhh.