Daughter just brought a Dell Studio 1536 laptop. Came with Vista Home Premium installed. Also came with a system restore disk. There is no sticker for keys on the machine like older once did. Are there any files similar to Wpa.dbl file with xp that need to be backup? Are keys needed for reinstallation on this machine? Thanks jt
you should have a restore partiton also this will put your system back to the way it came with all the software. As for the restore dvd this is just normal dell vista OEM dvd you dont need to enter a number it is included on a file called pid.txt in sources folder. The vista dvd is for doing a clean install of vista without all the garbage i,e, demo programs that come installed with your laptop you should also have a drivers cd/dvd ? P.S. vista serial number is sometimes on the battery.
thanks for the quick reply. nothing beats an answer from an expert!!! there is a Restore partition on the hard drive. there is a pid.txt file with the serial in it as well. Would backing up the Restore partition to dvd be enough in case of drive failure? jt
What i have done is backed up my dell hidden partiton that is the diagnostic one and the recovery partiton with acronis to another hard drive, just in case i ever need them , for yourself to be safe i would use acronis and backup whole harddrive to dvd's you can add acronis to the dvd to make it bootable. I have since removed all dell stuff and extra partitions done clean install added my drivers then i did an acronis image. if you are not sure what you are doing i would wait untill your warranty runs out before you do as i did also i think laptop may have an extra partiton some kind of media player.
Thank you for taking the time to help. I already ghosted the drive. While the thing is still under warranty, she just has to back up her datas often. If the drive fails, Dell will have to replace the drive and reload every thing anyway. As soon as it is out of warranty, I am putting a new drive with Win7 on it. Thanks again jt