Hi guys, bit of a loaded question. Basically my friend's system was damaged, and it doesn't boot into windows vista. I want to try going into recovery mode using a vista dvd, it's a Vista Home Premium system. It's on a laptop, and I'm presuming it came preloaded on the system. However, if recovery mode fails, I would prefer to reinstall without losing the files. Where can I find a Vista Home Premium ISO that will allow me to do all that? I've found numerous versions, including those with sp1 installed, etc. If the system doesn't have a service pack installed, will using a disc with a service pack allow me to reinstall (or recover if it works) without losing any files?
You need the same version as was on the laptop before it crashed,during boot it will give you several options do you want to repair or do a clean install etc you select repair and it will try repair the system, if it cant repair the only option is a clean install,if you need to save files you can try remove the hard drive and connect through a external caddy and get your files from there, they might even be on a separate partition to you operating system if so you can do a recovery clean install and the files will remain,it is important you find if the files are on a separate partition otherwise they will get overwritten and lost.