I have a Dell Studio 540 I bought in 2009 that came with Vista 64-bit pre-installed. I didn't get any Vista install discs but instead had a recovery partition (D). I didn't create any backup discs at the time.
Now my hard drive is about to crash and burn (I'm getting "imminent failure" warnings from Vista and from Dell's diagnostics). I've purchased a new hard drive, but I want to know how to reinstall Vista on the new drive once it's replaced my failing one.
I'm trying to create recovery/OS reinstall discs, but I'm not finding a way. I don't seem to have any Dell backup software to do this, neither Datasafe or Dell Backup. (My hard drive was previously wiped clean and Vista reinstalled a couple of years ago when my video card failed. Maybe these apps got wiped out at that time, I don't know.)
I still have the recovery folder on my (still) working hard drive and have also copied it to an external hard drive.
Can anyone tell me how to create install discs so I can reinstall Vista to my new hard drive?