Where can I get a back up copy of my vista OS?

I reformatted everything and assumed there would be a recovery disk. There wasn't... so what's the best way to get a copy of my original OS?

 

You'll need to contact Sony, as they should have recovery discs they can ship you.

Other than that, there really isn't a way that I can think of.

 

do you know how much they charge?

 

the cost will be little over $30.00 including shipping.

http://servicesales.sel.sony.com/web/contact_us.jsp

 

Wait....Sony doesn't include recovery disks with their laptops? ???!!! Even my crappy cheap Toshiba came with recovery discs with the OS on them.

Can anyone verify this?

 

Current Sony models ship with a recovery partition, from which you can burn your own recovery DVD's. If the OP had such a partition, then formatting wouldn't affect it unless he actually deleted/formatted that recovery partition itself.

I have a 9-month old Toshiba Satellite A135-4467 that, as I recall, didn't ship with Vista recovery media either. It also has a recovery partition on the HDD. Press a key at boot up, and it automatically restores the factory image.

 

Okay, so it's not a manufacturer thing, it's a Vista thing. My Toshiba has XP Media Center, so that's probably why it came with a recovery CD.

I guess the recovery partition would explain why with Vista people aren't getting their full hard drive size like I've been hearing...makes sense though.

So I guess recovery CD's are a thing of the past? Now that I think about it, my friend said her Acer didn't come with one either, and she just got that.

Thanks much for the info, it clears some things up. ^^

 

It's not necessarily a Vista thing. Many laptop vendors have stopped shipping media, for several years now. They either expect you to create your own media from recovery partitions or files provided, or they expect you to buy it from them.

I just double-checked, and my Toshiba shipped with a Vista Anytime Upgrade DVD, which (along with a CD key) will allow you to reinstall Vista from scratch, but it's not the factory recovery media (doesn't have all the pre-installed and configured Toshiba stuff). The recovery partition is required for a factory image recovery, as I thought.

I imagine Toshiba just changed their policy sometime between your laptop and mine, because nothing about MCE would require media vs. a partition either. In fact Vista Home Premium and Ultimate versions include MCE. I wiped Vista from my Toshiba, which is currently running Linux, so I can't check to be certain, but I don't recall there being a way to create DVD's from the recovery partition. Which is a drawback compared to Sony. I could be wrong though, as I only ran the Toshiba Vista image for maybe 2 days before wiping it for the Linux install.

 

i delete all partitions when i formatted. Is there anyway to recover this?

 

Nope, I'm afraid not without buying/borrowing a recovery DVD set, which would restore the recovery partition IIRC.

 

If you don't want to pay $30 or wait for CD. just download which ever version of Vista via P2P, either eMule or BT. and use the key under your laptop to active it. you maybe required to call Microsoft to verify once the OS is installed (the phone line opens 24/7). Then, just download drivers from sony official site.