Can I copy recovery partition to new drive and start installation from there ??

I have a VGN-FZ240E that has some issues. I am sure that previous virus removal efforts have damaged my operating system beyond reasonable repair.The only real solution I believe is to reinstall Vista. 2 Problems, 1 I do not have the recovery dvds, 2 the system will not me make a recovery set. I can see a recovery partition on the disk when I ran Easues Partition Manager. In fact, I copied the recovery partition to a logical drive I created on the hard disk. So now I can see it in explorer, and browse it.

I am wondering if I copy the recovery partition to a new hard drive can I then start the new drive as a boot device and reinstall Vista from it ? If I can then my plan would be to do the transfer files and settings from original drive to get me back up and running correctly. This would also archive all my stuff in case of an unfortunate mishap. I understand I will need to reinstall apps and such I just do not want to have to dish out the extra $30 for the disks. And I have already combed this machine and cannot locate the WUA files.

 

<strike>I'm not sure...

I can tell you though that on the SZ the recovery discs can create a recovery partition - they (the discs when installing) asked me if I wanted to create one on my SSD</strike>

Possibly not Guess

 

You can do this ONLY if you can get the recovery partition in EXACTLY the right spot on the new drive. Unfortunately this is very difficult. It appears that when you hit the F10 key that the BIOS looks at a particular physical location on the drive for the recovery partition. I tried this without success.

However if you can first move your stuff off the existing drive, then you could use the F10 to restore Vista on the OLD drive and then create a set of recovery disks you could use to create an OS on the NEW drive.

Sort of a convoluted way to get where you want but it does save you the 30 bucks.

Gary

 

I guess I can clone the old drive to the new media and try running the autoexec in the recovery partition. Might be interesting - I have had some very bad experiences with OEM recoveries in the past(HP,,,argh). I would rather transfer stuff into new installation. I do not mind it not being a "clean" install - I can uninstall the bloatware later. But they never seem to run as fast as right after a fresh install. I do have a Vista Ultimate Disk, but is only for vlk -not OEM.

 

vlk???

"not OEM"?? You can use any Ultimate disc - provided you have an "empty" license - not matter if its an OEM or not install... either you can upgrade or you have to clean install.

However in most cases "Ultimate" brings no benefit at all...

 

The disk I have requires a "volume license Key". I do not have a key for it, just the media.


What exactly is an "empty" license ? I am assuming it means one that has not been activated... but you know about assuming.

 

With an "empty" key I did mean one that hasn't been activated.

OK - and you have the media and an OEM key on the bottom of your laptop for the same OS?

You might be able to install that and activate by phone - but I'm not sure.