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Vista 32 iso

B

brandonb

Diamond Member
My roommate bought a laptop and it came with Vista 32 bit and a bunch of preinstalled apps. They never included a vista CD. He reformatted and tried to use his CDKEY with Vista 64 (which he had a disc for) bit which didn't work. Now he wants to put Vista 32 bit back on but has no media disc for it.

Is there a place to download the .iso for 32 bit or is that illegal? I think since he owns vista 32 bit and it was originally on there and he has a CD KEY for it, it would be legal, but I'm unaware if its illegal or not.

Anybody have any ideas.

(I'm not asking for a file location or anything like that, I'm just curious if its legal or not for him to do that)
 
Has he tried calling the laptop maker and asking for a restoration CD/DVD? If the laptop is under warranty, you can usually get them. Historically, Dell has sent them for free if you ask nicely.

Also, is there no "Recovery Partition" on the hard drive? If you don't get Recovery CD/DVDs, then it usually means there's a Recovery Partition built in.
 
I know he said there was extra partitions. I don't know if he saved them or not, I will have to find out later. But thanks for the response!
 
What didn't work when he tried to install 64-bit? Most people have been successful doing so. Was it just asking him to call in to activate? If so it will probably activate fine over the phone.

The recovery partition will work if it's still there, but will probably have all the bloat. There's no easy way to obtain media from MS unless you have a retail copy or technet/etc subscription.
 
As mentioned already, there will be no problem with a 64-bit DVD.
As long as you have a real 64-bit Vista DVD, you can use the key printed under the laptop.
When you attempt to activate over the internet, it will fail.

That happens because the manufacturer did not use that key to activate. The manufacturer has used a different key for activating an image and restoring it on many identical laptops in their production line to save time.

When activation over the net fails, you are given a phone number to call. Call that number and they will activate as long as:
1- You have a legitimate key that is not used on another machine
2- You have a valid Vista DVD you used for the installation

The same goes for a 32-bit DVD.
 
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