Vista Tutorial - Create a Recovery Disc

it does help thanks...so i should just be saving a recovery elsewhere like a cd or flashdrive...i would of preferred them giving me a recovery CD than take up useable harddrive space...anyways i appreciate your time

4lifemetalworks,

You could save it there or to another hard drive or another newly created partition from C: .

Disk Management - Shrink Partition


Depending on what brand your computer is, you may be able to create a OEM Recovery CD/DVD from the partition to use. Your computer documentation should show you how to do this. If not, post back with your brand to see if I can find the instructions for how at the OEM's website. You can then use that DVD instead and delete the D: partition and extend C back into it, or keep it and have it or the DVD as a backup.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Brink.. I'll give it a try and post back when I've done it. May be tomorrow but I'll try to post back by thursday.

Burned it... I should install the disk, restart and see if it boots? if so.. take the disk out and hit restart?

Sorry Brink, I did more reading and see how its done.. Have to set my BIOS to boot from CD/DVD, then insert the disk, restart, hope it works..if it does.. how do I exit without changing anything...? if it doesnt.. restart..enter Bios, change to boot from my HD, and save and restart. Yes?

Blaydrnnnr,

You should be able to just close the window from the X in the upper right corner like normal to back out of the System Recovery Options Screen without changing anything. If all else fails, just remove the DVD and hit the restart button on the case to boot into Vista.

Hey Brink...i helped my mother create a recovery cd for vista and i did it for my computer running vista also. Heres the thing though...she recently had a problem with her computer. (she managed to erase her favorites link). Her D drive had that recovery folder in it with a lock next to it, but no manually saved revovery folders. So i went to her control panel and opened up recovery so i could recover her windows structure. It would not recover? it said last recovery failed. So i tried saving a recovery to see what would happen and why? it almost saved then said not enough space..failed. So why is there that recovery folder with a lock next to it if i cant recover? is it a recovery that only works when you book up in the BIOS and restore their? Anyways she ended up paying 16 dollars for a restore disk and everything is back to normal. im just a curious computer newbe that enjoys and appreciates people like you who make it look easy..thanks again

4lifemetalworks,

The recovery partition D:\ is not the recovery used by Vista. This is used by your OEM to reinstall Vista with only. Usually you would press something like F10 or F11 to boot to the OEM Recovery Manager (recovery partition) to select a option like "Restore Factory installation". You will have to check you computer's documentation for their (OEM) exact procedure, but it should be very similair to this.

The restore disk she bought is the same thing as what the D:\ recovery partion does, but on DVD instead.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

That does help Brink....and you make my computer world a brighter one. So in reality i could of recovered her computer from the BIOS and saved her 16 bucks. Funny how the company she bought the computer from (Hewlett Packard) told her she needed to buy a recovery cd and said nothing about the recovery on the D drive. Anyways its weird how theres space on my D drive for a personel recovery save...and theres none room in my moms. Ill just have her save recoverys on an external CD periodically. Thanks again Brink and there will be a donation to this great site very shortly.

Your welcome 4lifemetalworks. Don't worry though. It's always a good idead to have a copy of the recovery installation partition on CD/DVD just in case something happens to the hard drive.

Some OEM recoverys have a little space to use for personal recovery, but I always found it better to use another location than the recovery partiton since that is what's used to reinstall Vista with.

Thank you,
Shawn

Nice tutorial...
But i have the same problem. i have lenovo y410 775789Q with vista home basic sp1, but they didn't give me any dvd related to vista, so how can i take recovery disk, plz reply me. Is there any chance for me total reinstall of vista.