If you are one of the unfortunate souls who did not get a Vista recovery disk with your new PC purchase, you can download one in a iso image from the link below. The only problem is that this is a torrent download and requires you share the downloading chores with others. On the site it states:

It doesn’t matter that you just paid a thousand dollars for a machine that comes with a valid Windows Vista license - your computer manufacturer just don’t want to spend the money (or perhaps take on the responsibility) of giving you a Windows Vista installation DVD to accompany your expensive purchase.

The problem is, with Windows Vista, the installation media serves more than one purpose. It’s not just a way to get Windows installed, it’s also the only way of recovering a borked installation. The Windows Vista DVD has a “recovery center” that provides you with the option of recovering your system via automated recovery (searches for problems and attempts to fix them automatically), rolling-back to a system restore point, recovering a full PC backup, or accessing a command-line recovery console for advanced recovery purposes.

Microsoft seems to have realized this problem, and have thankfully made a recovery disc for this purpose. It contains the contents of the Windows Vista DVD’s “recovery center,” as we’ve come to refer to it. It cannot be used to install or reinstall Windows Vista, and just serves as a Windows PE interface to recovering your PC. Technically, one could re-create this installation media with freely-downloadable media from Microsoft (namely the Microsoft WAIK kit, a multi-gigabyte download); but it’s damn-decent of Microsoft to make this available to Windows’ users who might not be capable of creating such a thing on their own.

This is a 120MB download so a broadband connection is highly recommended. Also this is an official download site for the Microsoft product so it does not contain any spyware or other junk.

Comments welcome.

Tags: vista, recovery, disk, dvd, download, microsoft, site, torrent