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Where can you download Windows Vista Home Prem 32 Bit OEM

I have an HP laptop that is about 4 years old with failing hard drive and I am not able to create recovery DVDs since customer never made and the hard drive is failing.

I do not have a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bit OEM to use to reinstall but of course the product key is on the laptop.

Where is a good and legal location to download Win Vista Home Premium 32 bit OEM that can be used to do the fresh install on new hard drive?

I Google it and look at "My Digitial Life" but spend a long time trying to find what will work in my case but no luck. They have tons of flavors at My Digital Life for example, but none that would work for this job that I can see...

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

PowerEdgeTech

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InterframeGap

I would first stay away from Vista and move to windows 7 32 bit. Pending on the RAM/CPU/Disk you may be hard pressed to run Vista/Win7 on the device. You may want to consider running WinXP and have nice workable machine which could be fast or faster than Win7. If I were in your shoes I would look at XP since Win7 does not really buy me anything on an older laptop (you would have to customize and remove flashy features to get better performance).
Plus an XP disk will cost you less than win7. Technet will cost you around $400.00 and it's purpose is for testing and development. MSDN will cost you much more 600-4,000 and the msdn is geared toward a programmer (Visual Studio - C#, F#, Visual Basic etc).

Just to get the facts - what is the machine type -
RAM: X GB
DISK: 5400RPM
CPU: Single Core (Intel/AMD) what's the speed of the cpu?

Hope this helps, if it does not, give us some more info to go on.
You can also read up on microsoft the general requirements of Win7 (I would not even go with Vista). and see if your laptop is in the required range.

Sincerely,
Douglas

PowerEdgeTech

The only reason I suggested TechNet and MSDN is just in case he already has an account. I wasn't suggesting he go out and buy a subscription ... it's not worth it to buy a subscription just to fix the issue, but if he already has an account, then he can use the media to install, then call Microsoft to activate ... done it dozens of times for people in his shoes - product key but no OEM media. (Don't even get me started on the OEM no-media thing!)

He can get this fixed:

For free: If he has access to a Retail copy of Windows.
For $20: Order replacement media from HP.
For $100: Buy Windows XP to put on it instead (why do this??).
For $150: Buy Windows 7 to put on it instead (ok, but $$).

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☠ MASQ ☠

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PowerEdgeTech

Thanks Masq ... I knew I'd seen it before but I couldn't find it for some reason :)

Jackie Man

There might be a recovery partition for the recovery of the OS without a Vista Setup DVD. For details, please see the link below.

http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/270808-full-recovery-preinstalled-vista-oem-software.html

Remarks: You might need to backup the data first by removing the hard drive, put the hard drive in an USB external case and attach the case to another computer for backup.

Jackie Man

If you really want the ISO file for a Vista OEM setup DVD, google it... EE experts cannot tell you the links as it will violate the EE rules. Besides, it is too risky and takes too long to download. Vista OEM setup DVD is more than 2GB in size and the unofficial shares are hosting on free servers like rapidshare and filesonic.

So, the official answer is NO. If it is urgent, go to the HP customer centre in your location for help.

rdwolf

ASKER

Thanks for tine input. The HP option or the retail disc of Vista are good options. I was hoping there was a legal location you could download the Vista 32 Home Prem 32 and then just use the prod key on the device.

For the input on install Win 7 and XP, I am aware that could be an option but that is not what I asked.

Thanks