How to recover Vista after XP install...

Hi everyone,

I have an Aspire 9410 and I installed XP Pro on the C: partition becasue the 1 gig of ram didn't cut it for Vista Home Premium.

I have since upgraded the ram to 2gigs and want to recover to factory settings. Of course the way to do it from the Bios doesn't work and I am totally lost on how to recover the laptop to Vista.

Any hints, links?

Thanks

 

Have you tried pressing alt+f10 at the post screen to activate the windows recovery process from the hidden partition? I assume you did not delete that hidden partition when you installed windows XP.
Your other option is the recovery DVDs I hope you made at first boot up, however if you didn't bother to create the backup DVDs when you first got the system then the recovery partition is your only hope to get it back to "factory settings".

Hope this helps you...

 

If neither of the above then Acer should be able to provide a recovery CD/DVD set (at a cost).

 

alt+f10 does not work... I had read somewhere the formatting the c: drive and installing XP messes up the master boot record or something.

I did not make any recovery dvds. Will ACER mail them to me?

 

If you want acer to send(mail) you recovery DVDs like Arla said it is going to cost you they will not do it for free. Contact acer tech support and they will guide you further on how to proceed and what it will cost as I have never had a reason to do this...

 

just got off the phone with them... will be sending them out to me. He never said a word about money.... we'll see if I actually get them I guess

 

When you ordered did you have to give them your serial number to get the same Key and Vista ID number or do they send you a new one?

 

They did ask for my serial number i think to confirm still under warrenty maybe??

I asked him if I needed to enter my key, but he said no it is the OEM OS so no key is needed...

we'll see...

 

Do you still have the Vista Anywhere Upgrade CD that came with the lappy? You may want to give this trick a try:

http://www.infopackets.com/channels...k_clean_install_vista_without_previous_os.htm

BTW, how did you get them to send you the CD for free? Last time I called them, the guy said the cost will be $50 plus ship.

 

I didn't do anything special. I called explained that I installed XP and now I want to go back to Vista. He proceeded to tell me that Vista is gone, so I replied with "can you send me some recovery cds", he said hold on, came back asked for my address and send they are backordered but will ship in about a week.