I have a Windows 7 upgrade on a Vista PC (Dell Inspiron 530) Can I remove the Windows 7 upgrade by taking the PC back to Vista factory settings. The "D" drive with recovery settings seems to be intact. Or will I have to completely reinstall Vista.
Thanks for any help. derricksmythe68
You will have to completely reinstall, with discs. Once another OS is installed on a Dell, the Dell recovery partiton (F8 for Vista/Win 7 systems) is no longer valid as its tied to the boot sector on the hard drive and that is changed with a different OS. I used to do a lot of support on the Dell users forums and this question (about the Dell recovery partition usage) comes up quite a bit.
As most Dell's in that era did not ship with Discs you may want to consider keeping Win 7 on it, even if its because you want to dispose/sell the old I530.
Why would you want to go back to Vista - do you have another PC you want to use the Win7 Upgrade on?
To reinstall the same version of Vista given on the COA sticker on machine, you'll need to first assure the Product Key is readable, then follow these same steps to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM.
You can compile a Vista installer by following the steps given on this Dell page: Vista ISO download
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