What I meant was to exchange it with the same model. That way at least you can make a recovery disc from the recovery partition in case you run into problems like you are having now. Isn't it better to have a backup till you find a way to get a hold of a Vista installation disc? "Clean Vista" means that the Vista installation disc has not been modified in any. If it is shown to be modified, who knows what was modified or what has been added or what has been deleted. It MAY also contain viruses and trojans or other harmful things you probably don't want.