Install vista on new hard drive

And how to install Windows 10 on SSD? This post shows you the detailed steps along with the screenshots of the operation steps. In addition, some easier ways are explained. Undoubtedly, Windows 10 is gaining popularity these days. And how about reinstalling Windows 10? Here is the full guide along with pictures. Today you can no longer upgrade to 10 for free, so buying Windows 10 should be your first move. Please go to Microsoft Online Store to finish this process. In fact, what you are buying is a license key to activate Windows Without a license key, anyone can download and use Windows 10 for 30 days.

But for permanent access, a license is required. See also: Difference between Windows 10 Home and Pro. Now things get much easier, Microsoft offers a user-friendly Microsoft Media Creation Tool to help you get the installation media ready.

Click Here to download this tool and run it. The wizard will ask you to select Language, Windows Edition and Architecture. You can accept the recommended options or make your own choice.

Then click Next. Here take the former one for an example. Select the removable drive from the list when asked, and make sure you've copied any files you want to keep off it because it will be formatted during the process of creating Windows installation media.

Click Next to continue. The tool will start downloading Windows 10 as well as any available updates to your USB drive and make it bootable, which allows you to install Windows 10 later. When the process is successful, you'll see a message that reads "Your USB flash drive is ready".

At this time, click Finish to exit. Please follow the detailed instructions below:. I purchased a refurb with a Gb rpm drive in it. I wanted to go bigger and faster like most people do, so I bought a Momentus Gb I also purchased a cloning program with a usb adapter kit.

See link:. If you do use this, be sure and set your power settings so they don't go into sleep mode. Also, boot from vista, not from the cloning software disk. Basically, you put the new drive into the usb caddy, plug in the usb, install the software, and run the program. It will automatically set partition sizes to coincide with the original hard drive's sizes - very cool and easy. Once cloned, just unplug the usb, swap the drives out, and boot it up. I would insist that Dell send you a copy of Vista though.

It definitely should have come with a copy. There is a link under the support page where you can let them know if something was missing from your box. It's much more expensive, takes a longer amount of time to be delivered, and I don't want to have to go through required paperwork. If I ordered straight from Dell, it might be faster but the Costa Rican mail service they've lost my packages a few times in the past, and never made responsible.

Besides, I would only be using this once :. If all this software does is copy files from one hard drive to the other, that's something I can do myself I already have a SATA to USB enclosure , but I was wondering if anyone knew what's the best way to do it "manually".

Regarding getting a copy of Vista, I'm pretty sure the reason they didn't ship one is my hard drive came with a Recovery partition that should, in theory, contain everything I need to reset my computer to factory defaults.

Can anyone else shed some light here? Thank you again. I got it to work by holding CTRL as soon as I saw windows loading, and holding it through windows startup. First, thank you for this guide. I have one problem which is unfortunately in the extremely important step.

For some reason I can't get the repair command prompt console. Any ideas? Last year I upgraded to Win 7 I just experienced a bad infection that has caused me to reinstall Win 7. My question is — can I go all the way back to vista and install the 64 version instead and then upgrade to Win 7 64? Hey, I'm having some trouble with last step. Any advice? First - thanks - works a treat. I've refurbished an older lap top with no recovery disks and a second hand hard drive and it runs like a dream now.

Only issue I had was using the hotkeys and enter to open CMD as administrator. On my 'host' machine it opens with restricted rights so it confused me for a moment got it right third time. But all I did was click on the start globe, type cmd in the search box and CMD comes up as the first result. Right click on it and select 'run as administrator' and it's no longer an issue. Reply 7 years ago on Introduction. The guide for Vista has an important step that you do not have to do when installing Windows 7 or 8.