nc8430 Vista clean install?

Hi,
I recently bought the nc8430 from newegg, came with Vista Business. Core 2 Duo 2 T7200.
I am wondering how I would go about reformatting the hard drive and doing a Vista fresh install. I got no discs with the laptop at all, but there is a sticker on the underside with a key.
I have a Vista Business disc I got for my desktop so could use that DVD to reinstall.
What is the best way to go about it without losing the HP emergency recovery program and being able to activate the Vista Business I got with my laptop.

Thanks,
James

 

I guess you have to create those emergency recovery discs, and then use them to clean install. I also guess that when booting from those discs, during install, you will be asked to select a partition where to install Vista. You probably can keep the emergency partition.

 

Check out my guide (in my sig) for doing a clean install. I didn't save the recovery partition, so I'm not sure how well that works, but you can/should make recovery discs yourself, which will allow you to do a restore if you want later. The "emergency partition" doesn't really do anything more than the recovery discs do.

 

Will I be able to use my Powertogether Vista Business DVD in place of the Anytime Upgrade DVD?

 

As far as I know, all Vista DVDs are identical. The only difference is the serial number and maybe the label on the disc. Otherwise they are the same (actually, there are 2 discs, 1 for 32bit and another for 64bit).

 

Is there a way to make recovery discs, then do a clean install. Then after Vista is up and running with updated drivers and software create another HP recovery partition on the extra 6GB partition?

My goal is to just do a Vista clean install and have the HP recovery partition but not with the factory settings, but an image of my clean Vista install. Because if I do a clean install and delete the partition, then something goes wrong and I use the DVD's to restore to factory settings I will have to do the whole clean install process over again resulting in 2 Vista installations, the dvd recovery and the reformat install. Or would I be better off using Vista built in Complete PC backup and put it on the 6GB backup partition. Is activation required after recovery from a Vista backup recovery?

 

You have a few options here, but none of them involve an HP recovery partition. If you have Vista Ultimate, you can do a complete PC backup, which will allow you to restore the whole PC as you describe. This is sort of like a Ghost image of the system, and you can update it as you need to.

The other option is something Acronis Trueimage, which many people here have said works very well. It also allows you to take a full backup of your PC, then you can restore it later.

 

But these options will take up more then say 6GB, which is the size of the HP recovery partition because they are not reinstalling Vista from an iso image in the recovery drive. Just looking for a backup that will mimic the HP recovery backup while being a clean install backup and taking up no more then 8GB.

 

I don't know of a way to do that. If you are really savvy, you might be able to work with the Vista deployment tools and build WIM images of the system after you install it. That's a pretty advanced Sysadmin topic, and many people have entire careers devoted to doing such things. It's cool if you can figure it out though!

 

Thanks for the help orev. I will most likely just end up using your guide.