I have a buddy's laptop that he hosed and then tried to "fix" himself. He does not have the original recover CD's and thus cannot simply put Vista back on.

I could order the recovery CD's from HP for $17 and wait a week for it to get here.

OR

The preferred method would  be to just have a Vista Home Premium CD and install Vista using the key that is attached to the bottom of the laptop, this way he wouldn't have all that crap Compaq puts on the laptop by default.

Does anyone know where I can download Vista Home Premium? This isn't illegal or pirating as I will be using his original legitimate key that is attached to the laptop. I just need the actual disk.

Any help, ftp site of your English image, etc would be very helpful.

Thanks!

www.inserttorrentsitehere.com?

Be warned 1. Torrents of operating systems may be comprimised. 2. Drivers could be a pain in the butt to find.

I recomend, pay the money and wait. Less hassle and you may as well do it right first time. One option - go to the store and ask REALLY nicely to borrow a CD from the box and do it in store.

I know a place but it would be from RapidShare so you'd need a Rapidshare account, if you want me to give you links and my account temporarily PM me.

Is it true that all Vista DVD's are the same? Basically all that matters is the key you actually put in?

i use an illegal version of Vista as well. Torrented it with a generated key, never had a problem. Actually , microsoft even says i have a legal version lol

 They are, but I doubt that he owns a "vista cd" he has a recovery cd with specific drivers for his laptop most likely. Theres no guarentee that a vanilla vista install has the drivers to even install on his laptop, or that the drivers are easy to find if it installs.

oh brother.

yeah, I thought about that. But, I usually have no problem finding drivers. I just want to utilize the key he already has so it will be nice and legit.

 Amen+1.

Never trust torrented operating systems! Its becoming quite lucrative to steal money via online transactions and you want to give them the chance to mess with it before it even goes on your system?!?!!?!

ok, fine. go to somewhere like WWW.mininova.com - search torrentz and READ the comments carefully, as in every single one and pick one with a large number of comments and seeders.

Be careful and then as soon as you can replace it with a LEGIT version, be careful. Microsoft can't assure security when its been touched by hackers before you get it. Think about that, especially if he does any online banking/shopping or even enters personal details like social security for things like identity theft.