Windows 7: Oem reinstall

Have you had a look at this information?

No I haven't had a chance, she's out of town, so I can't do any work yet. But I appreciate the help

Sent from my Droid Incredible

The OS has nothing to do with the Vista DVD booting, which must be done to reinstall. I would focus on getting the DVD to boot then try the repairs or reinstall: How to Boot your Computer from a Bootable CD or DVD

Where did you get the Vista DVD? Has it installed or repaired successfully before? Give it a good cleaning, burn another using ImgBurn at 4x speed from confirmed ISO source if you burned it yourself, or write ISO to bootable flash stick using this tool with Windows 7 in dropdown: Universal USB Installer – Easy as 1 2 3 | USB Pen Drive Linux

If the computer has registry files from different dates it still won't boot from a bootable cd. I'm in computer engineering, I know a pretty good bit about troubleshooting, removing spyware, and recovering data.

I'm only asking you guys about this because I dont, well didn't, know which key would work. I didn't want to wipe it before I knew I had everything off.

Now I know to use the key on the coa. Boom. Done.
Don't worry, my disc is legit. Although I do think that the disc that works for any version of vista sounds interesting and i'll probably make one and keep it in my toolkit.

Sent from my Droid Incredible

Incorrect. The HD is not even accessed at the stage the BIOS boots to DVD, which is entirely a BIOS operation and can be done even without the HD attached.

Best practices are that we provide the procedure to fix the problem so that others who hit on this thread via Google can learn how it is done. Someone else might appreciate that I took the time to type out the exact steps.

If you want to skip ahead to reinstall the OS, that is up to you but also must be done by booting the DVD.

Boots to DVD fine but it can't fix anything because its registry is screwed up. There is literally not a full set of the registry anywhere in the system. Not in the repair directory, not in restore points, and it isn't recognizing the OS on the drive so I can't perform a repair install.

Suffice to say she pissed off some guys from computer science.

Sent from my Droid Incredible

Sorry to hear that. Well at least we know now you can boot the DVD.

Sounds like she's in good hands there for the reinstall. Let us know if we can help any further.

i have STILL not mentioned any 7 upgrade; the responders keep mentioning 7 and i have already said that the owner of the computer is not interested, despite my efforts.