As this thread explains, my teenage son thought it would be a great idea to remove my Windows Vista Home Premium and install Linux, or Ubuntu. I didn’t like it, and I had him take it off and put Windows back on.
But it’s not the same as what I had. It’s Vista Ultimate, I think. I don’t know where he got it- downloaded it from somewhere- is that even legal? It doesn’t have Microsoft Word, which I need right now for resume templates. It also looks different. I do like that it has a fax program, but if I don’t have Word then it doesn’t help.
Is there anything I can do to get my Home Premium back? Would trying just rat out my son for downloading the Ultimate? He says there’s nothing I can do, but what does he know- he’s the one that thought I’d like Linux!
Vista is an operating system and it probably isn’t legal wherever he got it. You decide if that matters. MS Word comes with MS Office which is a completely different software package. If you had a legal copy before, you can install it again and it will work fine. If you need to buy a copy of MS Office it will cost several hundred dollars depending on the version you want. You can buy MS Word buy itself but it isn’t a good value unless that is the only application in MS Office that you will ever need.
Where did Home Premium come from originally? Was it installed on the computer when you purchased it? If so, did you receive reinstallation CDs? As for getting Microsoft Word, was it on the system originally? If so, it should be possible to reinstall it from the CD. Otherwise, look at Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition, which is about $130.
It did come with my computer that I bought Mar 1 2007. I could have sworn that it came with a CD, but my son says that it wouldn’t have. It (Word) was on the system originally. I’ve moved since buying it, but I will look for any CDs that it came with.
If you can’t find the CDs, the manufacturer may be able to send them for a small amount (twenty bucks or so), especially if it’s a major brand like HP or Dell.
Unless it’s radically improved in the last six months or so, Open Office is not a suitable replacement for MS Office. It has a lot of trouble reading documents that use any kind of advanced features.
I just used Open Office to do my resume, and it doesn’t seem too hard to figure out how to fax it (but whether to or not is a whole 'nother thread). My ex also recommended calling HP and seeing what they could do for me. I just want Home Premium back and everything back how it used to be. He also suggested that it could still be on my hard drive, but I sure wouldn’t know how to check that even with phone instructions, so I’ll call HP.
HP often have a partition with Windows on it that you are supposed to make recovery discs from - they don’t supply any discs.
Sometimes you can reinstall direct from the partition, sometimes that option is blocked after a certain time.
Look for any partitions (likely labeled ‘recovery’) on the drive. It could be hidden, as with some Packard Bell machines.
Use the Ubuntu disk as a Live CD and poke around on the hard drive with it to reveal any hidden partitions (Linux will see them but may not be able to access them without a lot of hoop-jumping).
Word is not a part of Windows, as said, but often Works comes with a new computer and the word processor is really a previous version of Word - perhaps it was this that you were using?