Trying to instal Windows Vista?

Question

.......And its proving to be a pain in my ***. Its a pirated copy that I got when my computer crashed and I had to reload windows to fix it. Now i'm trying to install it on a used Dell Latitude laptop. Its current running program is Ubuntu. I have never heard of it, but it sucks really hard and I cant even get online with it. It wont recognize my network connection no matter what I try, Even when I plug it directly into the cable connection, It recognizes the network, says its online, but wont connect to the internet.

When I put the disk in, and click on the Windows Vista Home Premium icon, these folders come up, boot, efi, sources, support, upgrade, autounattend,xml, bootmgr, keys.ini, setup.exe, and Windows Vista Activation,exe.
When I click to open anything i get an error message. It says End of central directory signature not found. Either this is not a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi part archive. In the latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on the last disk(s) of this archive.

Helpfull tips are much appreciated, I just want to sell this stupid thing, and get my money back!

Answer 1

IF your Dell has a Windows Vista CoA on it (if it was originally shipped with Vista)



ANY Dell "Vista Reinstall" disc will work. this is a matter of licensing between Dell and M$.



Try to get SP2 media as it'll save you some aggravation.

rare (but available) is Vista Ultimate Dell media.



But it works. you can pick up loose Dell reinstall media on ebay cheap.



As a commercially prod cued pressed media you have no worries about what crap some joker may have inserted into it.



That being said I'd really recommend using

Windows7 instead, but towards that end, some older Dell Vista computers

are "Twitchy" about Drivers when installing windows 7, so what I do

(And why I bought the Dell Vista re-installation media) is to install a clean copy

of Vista of the desired edition, install all the factory Dell drivers, let windows updates do all the updates it can find and after making sure everything works,(for a week) only then running Windows7 on as an "upgrade", that way the Win7 installation accepts the drivers....



Saves much aggravation.



An important note is that Vista Home can only be upgraded to 7 Home or 7 Ultimate

Windows Vista Business can only be upgraded to 7Pro or 7 Ultimate.



And you cannot upgrade from a 32bit os to a 64 or Vice-Versa, so be sure to get the Vista version that is most analogous to the windows 7 version you intend to run.





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Answer 2

Try booting from the DVD.



Also, why not just sell it with Ubuntu on it?



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Have you even TRIED searching Google with "Ubuntu Dell Latitude network problem?"



Hell, have you tried going to [System ->Administration -> Additional Drivers] to see if perhaps there was a driver you could install?



As for playing a movie or music, Ubuntu supports those just fine. You just haven't installed the proprietary codecs in the "Ubuntu-Restricted-Extras" package, which you should do after you get the network working.

Answer 3

Click on setup.exe file.I think Ubuntu does not execute .exe files.Insert the disk and restart the computer.It will ask to boot the CD during.It will display "press any key to boot the disk".Press any key and the windows setup will appear on the screen.