Reformatting vista with no key

Hi everyone,
This is my first post so I'll try and keep it simple

I bought an Asus a8js because of some of the great reviews on this site, and (although i havent gotten it yet thank you very much Fedex) I just had a question about reformatting it.

The laptop comes with vista home premium, but I understand it has quite a bit of bloatware and stuff included with it. I'm wanting to do a reformat as soon as it gets here, but I only have a boot disc for xp pro. Is there a way to find my vista key from the system and download a copy of vista off of bittorrent or something? Also, is this legal? Thanks a lot for any and all responses!

 

Legal?
according to Microsoft, no
according to reality, probably

It's hard to say if your key will work with a normal install CD, a lot of times they won't. I imagine that sometimes they do. Your key should be on a certificate of authenticity attached to the machine, probably on the bottom.

 

Yeah shouldn't your a8js come with a vista cd and key?

 

o0 Really? Is this separate from the system restore discs with all the bloatware which comps. always come with? If so... I guess that simplifies my problem by a lot.

Thanks both of you for the super quick response.

 

Oh yeah, didnt think about that; it could very well have the bloatware on the disk. You should still have the key on the sticker thing though.

 

Ok,this is my guess. I'm having A8JP.

In theory you'll get the Recovery CD/DVD with Vista, and a seperate CD/DVD "Driver and Utilities". So you can choose what bloatware not to install with the latter disc. The Vista Recovery Disc will most probably not contain bloatware.

 

I have an A8Js that came with XP Pro and that is how it worked. One recovery disc an another with the drivers and stuff. On the Asus forum they say to do the install of of the recovery and when it asks for the driver disc you just don't put it in (reboot or something). Then after you are in Windows you can install the drivers manually and avoid the bloatware.

That being said, Asus notebooks do not come with much bloatware. I think I uninstalled a couple of things but for the few other things it came with they were useful. If you had purchased a Dell it would be a whole other story.

 

Well I finally got it. 70 processes on first boot and 59 on second. Should I be worried? It runs pretty fast at 2gb but thats coming from someone who last used 512. Anyways, I did get 2 seperate cds so if I want to reformat I think it'll be pretty easy. Thanks to everyone for the advice!