[MetaKraid]

I have an Acer Aspire 5315 laptop that used to run on Windows Vista. However after contracting a virus that corrupted my registries and restore points, I was forced to reformat my Hard Drive. The backup disks I had made, are no longer in working order, and I have no reboot disks. (I thought the backups I had made would work, but they don't).

ANYWAY - I have two questions.

1) Should I re-install Vista (I had no problems with it until now) or get a new OS (if so, which?)

2) If I re-install Vista do I need to buy the full version with a new activation code (the one printed on the bottom of my laptop is still intact.

[fairnooks]

You might be able to order/download recovery discs for your system at what should be a good price https://secure.tx.acer.com/RCDB/Main.aspx?brand=acer. If not or you decide to go new the logical choice would be Windows 7 when it is released later this month, though there are some fire sales going on for Vista right now (even free wouldn't entice me in the least but you may differ).

[tbramamam]

Unless you deleted it, you should have a recovery partition. When the system is booting you should have an option to go to a boot menu, which should allow you to boot to the recovery partition.

If you buy a full version of Vista now, I don't know if you will qualify for the upgrade to Windows 7, or if that upgrade option is only for computers with Vista installed. Vista is the only Microsoft OS currently available unless you have a subscription to Technet or MSDN. So if you can't reinstall from the recovery partition, your choices are:
1) Purchase a full version of Vista.
2) Try to get recovery disks from the manufacturer and install Vista. You will be unable to use the computer until you get the disks.
3) Wait for Windows 7 to come out and buy a full version of that, but not be able to use the computer till then.
4) Install Linux either as a temporary measure until Windows 7 comes out or as a permanent replacement for Windows.

[MetaKraid]

Okay, I'll go with the Linux option for now, the laptop needs to be fixed ASAP and I'm short on cash. Any distributions you can recommend?

preferably one with Live CD functionality that's less than 690MB (provided you know of any)
Like I said short on cash, so all I have are 700MB CD's

Thank You for you help.

[MetaKraid]

OK, never mind that last bit, found Ubuntu and successfully installed it. Thank you all for your help.

[Elvandil]

You can mark your own threads "solved" using the button above.

[MetaKraid]

Sorry, forgot to hit that... thanks again!