I have a Sony Vaio laptop running Vista 32-bit. I'd like to get it to a clean installation of Vista for the purposes of selling it (i.e. rid it of any data). I do not have a Windows installation disc (thanks, Sony!), and the computer does not have a recovery partition. I tried creating a recovery disc by downloading and burning a DVD with the image here, but when I booted from that disc and tried to "install", go an error message ("cannot open the required file D:\Sources\Install.wim. The File does not exist."
Any suggestions?
Best Answer
What you can do is somehow obtain some kind of Windows Vista installation media for your particular edition of Windows Vista. There are lots of places on the internet which have these files. You can do this, so long as you use the serial number given to you by Sony.
The actual serial number should be on the bottom of your laptop, including the edition of Windows Vista which you are legally entitled to have on your laptop.