windows vista problems

[devinw]

alrite, so i had Windows Vista Home Premium installed. i went and installed a copy of windows XP and am regretting it. i want to go back to vista now and realise that i still have windows vista installed on my computer, as in i still have a windows vista folder on my c:\

is there any way, without reinstalling vista, to go back to it since i still have it on my hard drive? I have my product key for it and everything.

also if i cant do this, is there anyway to reinstall windows vista, without discs?
i have my product key, but the place i got my PC from didnt send vista CDs. i phoned them up and just kept getting put on hold and switched around until it sounded like they werent going to send me any.. so is there anyway to do either of those things?

reinstall without vista CDs
or switch back to vista, since its still on my computer

 

[KSoD]

Did you dual boot? Are you sure that the Vista folder you are seeing isnt your Recovery Partition? I would be willing to bet thta it is your recovery partition.

Hit F12 after the BIOS screen and select to boot from that partition and reset your PC to factory settings.

 

[devinw]

i dont know if its the recovery partition, but i know its on my c drive with the rest of my stuff. i have a Windows folder, which inside of it there is some stuff called HomePremium. i didnt think that there would be any files named HomePremium in an XP install, and its not a seperate drive from the rest of my stuff.

i just restarted, went to boot menu and i got boot from drive or whatever, where i got the choice of my windows XP, and i got boot from disc

 

[KSoD]

Well sadly since you dont have the Recovery Partition it seems you will have to either get a copy of the Vista DVD or you will have to order a set from the manufacturer.

There is no way to "roll back" a XP install to get Vista active again.

 

[devinw]

frick

i read on the internet somewhere that you can like.. create a new partition or something and then install vista on there from an ISO or something. i didnt really understand it, but is it bunk?

 

[KSoD]

No it isnt bunk. Can do it cause it basically uses that ISO as the install media. But you dont have any of hte Media. You would have to download the ISO anyways might as well just burn it to a DVD and then use that to install. Much easier than trying to get that working.

 

[devinw]

but you can download vista? i didnt think you could for some reason

 

[KSoD]

No you would have to find a souce to download it. Like MSDN or Torrents. As long as you have the serial the media can be obtained any way. It is just the serial that matters.

 

[KurrentEweser]

Who makes your computer? If it has a recovery partition it's most likely hidden. It should be accessible with a key combo at boot time.

 

[devinw]

its made by compaq, do they have one?