Hello,
I have a 2-3 year old Gateway laptop, with a default Windows Vista installation on it. I later put Ubuntu on, no problem.
As soon as the second year of my having the computer, Vista started misbehaving as it relates to Windows Update. Finally, about a month ago, Vista was destroyed completely. I can still mount the partition and look at the files, but no recovery software out there can allow my Vista system to boot. It just crashes at bootup.
So, I contacted Microsoft and mentioned that my recovery partition had gotten destroyed as well (nice, right?). Ok, well I deleted the recovery partition. I'll be honest.
Anyway, they nicely agreed to send me a DVD so I could start Vista anew. That works for me.
But now my DVD/CD drive died! Augh! Done! Useless!
So, my question is, is there a way to set up my USB external hard drive to boot an image of the Vista installation DVD I expect to receive? Can this be done without removing the current contents from my USB hard drive?
Thanks.
PS: My BIOS will boot from USB hard drive.