Windows 7 and Vista recovery disks links and Linux

windeguy

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When you purchase a new PC with Windows, they are not normally including any disks. If you run into a problem where your Windows 7 or Vista PCs won't boot up properly here are links where you can download the disk images for recovery disks for those operating systems.

Windows Vista Recovery Disc Download — The NeoSmart Files

Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs — The NeoSmart Files

I just revived a non-booting Vista installation and am using it right now.

Before I found this link, I purchased a new hard drive and loaded UBUNTU Linux on it. Linux is a free, open source, operating system. Quite honestly, Linux would serve most people's purposes and be a much more solid operating system to use than any version of Windows. (For those Mac lovers out there it would be somthing like having the OS you are using with the difference that it runs on PC hardware and the OS and programs are free).

Even with Linux I was able to read my Vista disk and try some things to get it back up and running using open source programs. It did take the recovery disk from the above link to finally fix the problem.

I am almost disappointed that I can run Vista again on this machine. At least I have a back up any time I need it in Linux.
 
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windeguy

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No problem.

I just tried an experiment. Since I already had a hard drive with Linux on it, I put it into a USB caddy and booted from it to see how well it would function. Linux booted up and runs very well from the USB port. If I unplug the USB hard drive and reboot then Vista will boot up. It is a least a very good back up situation if you lose a hard drive.