Vista "Restore"

[inflames988]

Long story short, I wiped my Sony laptop of vista when I bought it. I now have mac for iPhone development so the Sony needs to be sold. I've asked about downgrading to XP but ran into a couple issues. I did find two "restore" DVD's that I created when I bought the sony using vista's built in restore functionality. When I booted them, it said that it can only "restore" if it finds vista already installed somewhere on the machine (obviously it didn't).

Is there any workaround for this?

[Panama Red]

Borrow a copy of Vista Ultmate from someone and use the Product Key from the sticker on your Sony. I believe Ultimate allows you to load any oem version of Vista.

[inflames988]

Originally Posted by Panama Red Borrow a copy of Vista Ultmate from someone and use the Product Key from the sticker on your Sony. I believe Ultimate allows you to load any oem version of Vista.

Would i then proceed to use the restore thing, or just ignore it entirely?

[Panama Red]

Just do a clean install and ignore the restore idea.

[inflames988]

I was cleaning out my room today and found a *second* set of windows vista backup disks from the laptop...figured it wasn't worth bothering, so I grabbed a Vista CD elsewhere as per your recommendation. As i was about to reinstall i noticed a recovery option, selected to do a full recovery, and popped the disk in. It's restoring now - could save me a lot of trouble since it will already have the drivers installed