Looking for motherboard

[Paul]

Have you come across a safe online facility that would check and repair the Vista drivers on my hardrive. I would need to run from within Ubuntu.

Thanks

I don't know of any way to do that. Not from Linux at least.

Before you install a service pack, Microsoft has
System Update Readiness Tool (CheckSUR). But that
would be something you run from Windows. And I doubt
you could slave the drive to a working computer, and run
this either. It's only for a working copy of the OS.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-the-System-Update-Readiness-Tool

Also, inside Windows, you have system file checker (sfc).
But this is painful to get running. On my WinXP machine,
I had to change two registry settings, before it would
run. And it wasn't clear it was doing anything useful.
(Using the Performance plugin and monitoring disk operation,
it seemed to be doing only writes, and not actually "checking"
anything.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_File_Checker

Next up, are "Repair Install" and "Clean Install". A repair install
keeps your settings and programs. A clean install does not. On the
later OSes, I think the repair is more like an upgrade, and
you end up with a windows.old folder holding the old OS files.
The Clean Install, on the other hand, has nothing to lose.

I did manage to find some Vista files from digitalriver. The digitalriver
site, is where I got my Windows 7 SP1 installer DVDs, for emergencies.
And while the general search results for a Vista equivalent, said there
weren't any, this page provided some links. The format is a bit
weird though. There is a .exe and two .wim files. Whereas, later
OSes just come as a single .iso file, ready to burn to a DVD.
If the computer has a COA sticker and a Vista license key, you
may be able to do an installation with one of these. The problem
is, Vista comes in original, SP1, and SP2 flavors. And it's best
if you can match the service pack level, in terms of spending
time on downloading a DVD sized thing. If you use the SKU
part of the links here "X14-63452", maybe you'll find a page with
SP2 links. This doesn't list everything available, but the SKU
numbers may allow bootstrapping of some more searches.

http://www.askvg.com/direct-downloa...a-rtm-with-sp1-setup-files-32-bit-and-64-bit/

I tested that approach in a VM here. Downloaded a DVD from digitalriver,
got the 25 character key off my laptop COA, and loaded both of
those into a virtual machine for testing (not on the laptop). The
network cord was disconnected. The installer accepted the COA license
key, so at least that part of it worked. I did not risk my laptop
key, by attempting to activate that. Disconnecting the network,
was so no packets would be heading off to Microsoft Those
installs are deleted soon afterwards, but at least it
does give me a means to do limited testing (of things like
product installers, on top of Windows 7). The install will
complain about being "Not Genuine", in a fairly short time.

A tutorial for Vista Repair Install, is here.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html

Paul

 

[tumppiw]

I don't know of any way to do that. Not from Linux at least.

Before you install a service pack, Microsoft has
System Update Readiness Tool (CheckSUR). But that
would be something you run from Windows. And I doubt
you could slave the drive to a working computer, and run
this either. It's only for a working copy of the OS.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-the-System-Update-Readiness-Tool


Also, inside Windows, you have system file checker (sfc).
But this is painful to get running. On my WinXP machine,
I had to change two registry settings, before it would
run. And it wasn't clear it was doing anything useful.
(Using the Performance plugin and monitoring disk operation,
it seemed to be doing only writes, and not actually "checking"
anything.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_File_Checker

Next up, are "Repair Install" and "Clean Install". A repair install
keeps your settings and programs. A clean install does not. On the
later OSes, I think the repair is more like an upgrade, and
you end up with a windows.old folder holding the old OS files.
The Clean Install, on the other hand, has nothing to lose.

I did manage to find some Vista files from digitalriver. The digitalriver
site, is where I got my Windows 7 SP1 installer DVDs, for emergencies.
And while the general search results for a Vista equivalent, said there
weren't any, this page provided some links. The format is a bit
weird though. There is a .exe and two .wim files. Whereas, later
OSes just come as a single .iso file, ready to burn to a DVD.
If the computer has a COA sticker and a Vista license key, you
may be able to do an installation with one of these. The problem
is, Vista comes in original, SP1, and SP2 flavors. And it's best
if you can match the service pack level, in terms of spending
time on downloading a DVD sized thing. If you use the SKU
part of the links here "X14-63452", maybe you'll find a page with
SP2 links. This doesn't list everything available, but the SKU
numbers may allow bootstrapping of some more searches.

http://www.askvg.com/direct-downloa...a-rtm-with-sp1-setup-files-32-bit-and-64-bit/


I tested that approach in a VM here. Downloaded a DVD from digitalriver,
got the 25 character key off my laptop COA, and loaded both of
those into a virtual machine for testing (not on the laptop). The
network cord was disconnected. The installer accepted the COA license
key, so at least that part of it worked. I did not risk my laptop
key, by attempting to activate that. Disconnecting the network,
was so no packets would be heading off to Microsoft Those
installs are deleted soon afterwards, but at least it
does give me a means to do limited testing (of things like
product installers, on top of Windows 7). The install will
complain about being "Not Genuine", in a fairly short time.

A tutorial for Vista Repair Install, is here.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html

Paul

Also, if you get the computer to at least boot to windows, there's
DriverPackSolution
http://drp.su/


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