Shoutbox

Umm... slow down a little please!

The Dell OS Recovery CD will format your hard disk to its original leaving-factory state. You don't want to do this unless it's an emergency.

Usually (if you have Windows XP) the install files for Windows can be found in C:\Windows\I386. You can't directly burn these to a CD and expect it to boot, unfortunatly, but with some minor tools you may be able to get these files booting. (I had to use the WIN51IP files from an XP Pro CD to burn mine as well as Arnie's boot image).

What this has to do with you getting Vista is unclear.

To get the actual OS ISO for Vista you have to be a registered Microsoft tester, at the moment anyway.

If you're looking to repartition your hard disk so you have both Vista and XP installed, you don't need to wipe out your XP installation, you can use a tool like PartitionMagic to resize the partition XP is installed on and create a new one for Vista.