Solved Reinstall Vista with DR OEM copy

[ValiantSaint]

Hello, I was wondering if any of you fine people could help me?

You see, my friend has dropped off his Fujitsu Siemens V5535 Esprimo laptop off to me, so I can backup his data, and reinstall Vista, using the recovery partition. Sadly, it no longer works and he has no CD/DVD copies of the original install.

I do however, have a copy of Vista HP (32 and 64 bit) that I downloaded from a link a while back, that listed all of the Digital River (Sorry if I'm not allowed to talk about this) OEM copies of operating systems. Could I use one of these to restore the machine back to factory? His license key is listed as: "Windows Vista Home Premium OEMAct FujtisuSiemensComputers"

So would this key work, with the DR OEM DVD? (The .exe from the Vista ISO is listed as: X14-63452)

Many thanks in advance

 

[Lottiemansion]

Hi,

First no & second no.

 

[ValiantSaint]

Oops! So I'm/He's done for? I thought the Digital River OEM ISOs were just straight ports of the OEM installs? (Just Dell-based?) I've been known to be wrong before

 

[richc46]

I think that your compuer should work with Digital River. D.R. is a legal distributor of MS ISO. You must have a valid key number. D.R. should offer straight Vista. I do not know where the HP is from that you mentioned, but it may be from DR..
The OEM key will work only with that one computer that you mentioned
In the event that your Vista CD does not work, and you cannot find the Digital River site (I think that it may have been discontinued), you can post your email and an ISO link will be emailed to you. Just ask for what you want in the thread and give your email address, which you should deleted after receiving the ISO.
http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/296167-vista-iso-download.html
All this being said things can and do go wrong, be sure everything is backed up.
I would also download the free Macrium Reflect, to back up the entire hard drive. In case of a problem, the original can be reinstalled via the Macrium image.

 

[ValiantSaint]

Many thanks for the excellent reply. I've just checked the name of the Vista 32bit ISO I have stored on my data drive (X14-63452) and it corresponds with the one in that link you gave me. So I should be OK to reinstall Vista with a DVD created from this ISO, using the old COA, correct?

Cheers

 

[richc46]

My friend, download the free macrium reflect, make an image put it on your external hard drive. Now whatever you do, if the reinstall works, does not work or screws the computer, you can fix it by using the image. All that being said, sounds like you are good to go.
Good luck

 

[ValiantSaint]

Many thanks, yet again. I will indeed do a backup of the PC. I normally use True Image, though - is Macrium Reflect any good compared to TI? And the drive has 70GB of files on it. How fast is Reflect?

 

[richc46]

I really cannot answer your question. The regulars here use and recommend Macrium. I back up after all changes; updates, software etc and am 100% happy. It takes me about 12 minutes for my entire hard drive, 500GB of hard drive, about 1/4 of it is used.

 

[ValiantSaint]

Wow, Macrium is really fast! Backed up the SSD system drive, to my Spinpoint 1TB data drive in twelve mins!

What would be the quickest way to back up the drive in my mate's laptop? Place it in something else and back it up? Or run Macrium on the laptop an back it up to an external? (Can't back it up to another partition on his laptop, as there's no room to create one on the drive

Thanks

 

[richc46]

Never, never, but never back up on the same hard drive. If the drive goes bad you lose everything including the back up. Always back up to an external.
In your situation I would just back it up to an external drive. That is what I do and it saved me twice. Two virus, once I could not even boot.

 

[ValiantSaint]

Well, after all of your amazing advice, I'm marking this as solved

EDIT: Thanks for the heads up about Macrium Refect. What was going to take four hours on Acronis True Image, took 1 hour 22 mins in total!

 

[richc46]

Glad that you got the help that you needed.