after a long time, i finally got a copy of the recovery CDs for my laptop, anyway, i'm a little new to recovery because i usually just reformatted and reinstalled XP on our desktop PC, my questions:

1. if i reformat my primary partition C:, will the recovery CD install vista?
2. do i even need to reformat my primary partition? because as far as i know, the recovery CD will switch everything to the default settings my laptop came with

a little backstory as to why i wanna do this, my laptop keeps getting a win32k.sys stop error (blue screen error) and from the other sites that i've browsed, one of the top 3 reasons are (in no particular order): hardware related, particularly the RAM; the OS or some of the s/w installed; or the HD. as of the moment, i'm concentrating on the OS and the s/w because i don't wanna void my warranty by opening up my laptop.

Cleanup after reinstallation? i don't see any windows.old files or folders. oh, and i don't have the recovery partition (D:) anymore, you might not remember, but it was one of my first topics which you helped me with, i reformatted my recovery partition because i wanted the extra space. ^_^

Pipo, it's generally OK to scrap the recovery partition if you have a recovery disk - except for the case where your optical reader is on the blink and you want to reinstall. I keep mine even though I have a recovery disk and I have Ghost with which I can recover from my external disk. But I have 320GB of internal disk space, so the extra 10GB for the recovery partition do not bother me.

It arrives after a reinstall (unless you formatted first)

Recovery or repair?

"Recovery" is the same as reinstall (reset to factory state). On Windows.old - if you had used the circuits that are buried under your hair, you could have figured it out.
1. When you reinstall with Vista and your files still on C:, then the reinstallation process can save your stuff in Windows.old.
2. When you reinstall after you have reformatted C., then you wiped everything out with reformat and there is nothing to save.

but i didn't reformat and i still can't find windows.old, i also tried typing it in the search bar of my C:, unless Acer's recovery discs reformat the drive before reinstalling the OS (?)

@whs
it's alright, windows.old is just some of the thrash that came from before i recovered, right?

@Lighthouse
yeah, from the recovery partition, which can be burned to DVDs (only once, i think).

@jd2066
it was a manufacturer recovery disc that i used, maybe it did format my HD (which is good, because i prefer formatting a HD before installing/re-installing an OS).