Vista anytime upgrade dvd...

[cubby1223]

Alright, long story short, I have someone's laptop and the hard drive is dead & I'm waiting on a replacement drive to arrive. The laptop has a Vista Home Basic OEM COA on it. A Vista anytime upgrade dvd was included by the manufacturer. Can this dvd be used to reinstall Vista onto a new hard drive? Or do I need to be getting in touch with the laptop manufacturer for restore discs? Anyone know? Thanks.

 

[nerp]

It's actually a full Vista retail DVD. You can boot it and use it to install the OS using the key on the bottom.

You might have to manually activate the machine and it might kick you to telephone activation, but it will work.

The one benefit of using a recovery disc is the fact that you might not have to activate at all.

But the recovery disc might also install a ton of bloatware, so I'd just use the anytime upgrade disc.