[firelake92]

Hi, just wondering if it is possible to make a bootable Vista Home Premium disk from a computer with a genuine Vista license. As you know companies such as Gateway Dell etc don't provide the pure install software just stupid recovery disks. If this is not possible is there a cheap alternative to acquiring just a data DVD of Vista without the license? I find it frustrating these companies provide you a license but not the genuine software. Thanks. Not looking to do anything illegal unless I'm forced to by these companies.

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Actually, the recovery disks are usually more useful than a plain Vista disk. They've been optimized for your system, and they usually contain the Drivers and Applications that came installed on your system. While you may not want the applications, the drivers are essential for the system to run properly - and it's a genuine Pain to hunt them all down when using a plain Vista disk.

Dell still provides a plain Vista disk, with another disk for the drivers. Gateway has recently changed from providing a plain OS disk to making you make the recovery and apps/drivers disk (using the Acer eRecovery software). Toshiba has gone from their image based recover disks to having you make the OS and the apps/drivers disk. HP still makes you make full recovery disks. I can't recall what the Asus and Lenovo/IBM recovery disks do - but I think that they're either image based or like the HP disks.

I do several system reinstalls a week and prefer the recovery disks over the plain disks - it's just so much easier. In the past we'd do reinstalls with a plain OS disk but were spending too much time searching for drivers. So we've taken to asking customers to provide the disks - and if they don't have them we point them to the manufacturer to order a set (much cheaper than buying a copy of Vista).

[usasma]

Actually, the recovery disks are usually more useful than a plain Vista disk. They've been optimized for your system, and they usually contain the Drivers and Applications that came installed on your system. While you may not want the applications, the drivers are essential for the system to run properly - and it's a genuine Pain to hunt them all down when using a plain Vista disk.

Dell still provides a plain Vista disk, with another disk for the drivers. Gateway has recently changed from providing a plain OS disk to making you make the recovery and apps/drivers disk (using the Acer eRecovery software). Toshiba has gone from their image based recover disks to having you make the OS and the apps/drivers disk. HP still makes you make full recovery disks. I can't recall what the Asus and Lenovo/IBM recovery disks do - but I think that they're either image based or like the HP disks.

I do several system reinstalls a week and prefer the recovery disks over the plain disks - it's just so much easier. In the past we'd do reinstalls with a plain OS disk but were spending too much time searching for drivers. So we've taken to asking customers to provide the disks - and if they don't have them we point them to the manufacturer to order a set (much cheaper than buying a copy of Vista).

[DragonMaster Jay]

This option was once available for Windows Vista, that you could make a System Repair disk. That was taken out. To make matters better, Windows 7 now includes the option to make a System Repair disk.

[firelake92]

Do the Recovery Disc work to do a Complete Fresh Install of Vista?