Vista - Linux and Vista on hp laptop

I bought an Hp Pavillion dv2000 laptop, which came with vista. At the time, i was big into open source, so i made a couple of recovery discs for vista, and then wiped my HD. I installed ubuntu 8.04, and have been using it since. It is now the end of my first university semester, and i yearn for that windows experience, so i want to get rid of linux and put my recover-disc'd vista back on the laptop. Unfortunately, there doesnt seem to be any option to boot from the recovery cd's at the HP boot screen, or anything. Is it possible for me to use my recovery discs to put vista back, or am i stuck with linux? is simply buying vista and installing it that way an option?

I checked on an earlier forum thread from some 600 days ago, where people were talking about boot mangers and something called grub, but i didnt really find an answer.

At the moment, the computer has ubuntu 8.04 installed ONLY, and my vista is on recovery discs. Please help me, i've seen the vista-light!

One thing you could do is think about upgrading to Windows 64-bit. This would give you a bonefide boot disc enabling you to install Vista. This of course depends entirely on whether you have 64-bit hardware in your machine and you didnt provide that information in your System specs.

The 64-bit disc can be ordered from Compare editions: 64-bit editions of Windows Vista (see drop down box half way down). Its not expensive either.

thanks man. A friend of mine had suggested i boot from the linux disc, format everything, then do the recovery from the vista discs. would that work?
I'm not sure whether my machine is 64 bit or not, and im not sure which one my version of vista is either.

Yes that should work.

You should at least know what CPU it has, I can tell from that whether its 32 or 64.

well, i know its an HP Pavillion dv2000, with a 1.5ghz centrino duo.

and your avatar pic is hilarious. fyi.

Before I got too carried away I'd put the recovery CD in the drive and see if it will boot. Best to check the media of what you are putting on before you delete the thing that works now.

i tried that, but grub wont let me boot anything thats not unix/linux related.
which is why i have this problem in the first place. otherwise, id just recover from the discs, and i wudnt have needed to post in here.

Hi evanofam,

Your HP should have been loaded with a recovery software and a link in the bios to activate this.

When you first boot the machine you should see an option, (F12) I believe but could differ dependent on the actual model, to enter system recovery. following these prompts would then restore the system to the exact state it was in when it left HP. If this system is still working then you have this as a fall back in case anything goes wrong.

The disks you created should be "bootable" disks, to use these you will need to go into the system BIOS (F2?) and set the CD/DVD drive as the first boot drive, look for an entry named boot order or something similar. as this is done before any operating system commands then Grub will not be able to stop it happening.

If you check to see if these above apply in your case and post back will try to advise you further. I know that there are members here who have more knowledge with HP than I do and If needed will call for their assistance.

i tried that. system recovery wudnt work, the button did nothing, then grub took over. booting from the disks, and changing the boot order produced an error that says the following:


SYSLINUX 3.36 2007-02-10 EBIOS Copyright (C) 1994-2007 H. Peter Anvin
Could not find kernal image: linux
boot: (cursor is here, blinking)


maybe i can still boot from the discs from here?

Hi,

Were the system disks you are using created by the HP system in vista or were they created from linux as the error message looks a lot like a linux boot error.

Also purchasing a retail copy of vista would allow you to install a copy of vista but an alternative and cheaper option would be to contact HP and purchase a set of recovery disks for your system - these are normally available for a nominal fee