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i installed vista business on a freinds laptop. during the intsallation i guess she didnt have the power cord plugged in all the way so power shut down...
had to restart the installation now...
with that being said the windows.old was no longer saved is there any way at all to get those files back? possibly a free program to do hard drive recovery?
thanks in advance to anyone willing to let me know
if it helps any its an inspiron 8600 came pre installed with xp home... actually runs vista quite well at 3.0 as the index... but anyways... thought the model might help out..
So halfway through the installation it failed for whatever reason and you want the old installation back?
It is doubtful you will ever get it back as a fully functioning installation but depending on what options you selected during the failed installation most of the drive might still be recoverable. Your best bet if all you want is data off the drive is to get an external enclosure.
There is free recovery software out there, but your going to need a second drive to recover the data to, and the more you use the laptop, the less of a chance you'll get anything off it.
There is free recovery software out there, but your going to need a second drive to recover the data to, and the more you use the laptop, the less of a chance you'll get anything off it.
ill tell you this i can hook it into my desktop... now i know the file are there because vista business is rougly a 9 gb install and out off 55gb hard drive im using 20 gigz so i know that the files are there, but what to do to get it them is the question does anyone have free software solutions?
ill tell you this i can hook it into my desktop... now i know the file are there because vista business is rougly a 9 gb install and out off 55gb hard drive im using 20 gigz so i know that the files are there, but what to do to get it them is the question does anyone have free software solutions?
You need to explain a little better on what exactly you want.
Did you wipe the drive and some of her files that weren't backed up?
Why do you need the old windows install? You can't recover it.
I actually wonder if you used an upgrade CD and think you need the old files to do the upgrade?
No, you should not.
Pop the Vista CD in, it will start installing. At some point it will ask for the old windows key, type it in.
Otherwise, throw the recovery CD in and put her version of windows back on it.
I actually wonder if you used an upgrade CD and think you need the old files to do the upgrade?
No, you should not.
Pop the Vista CD in, it will start installing. At some point it will ask for the old windows key, type it in.
A Vista installation will never ask for a product key for an older Windows version. The upgrade version of Vista MUST be installed on a computer that has XP already installed, it's not like the XP upgrade where you can provide a CD of an older Windows version as verification. There is a work around for this but it requires a double installation of Vista.
Well if the OP comes back someone can suggest the best way to do what he needs to do. lol
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