Vista installation in my old laptop

My old laptop came with Vista preinstalled in it. But I do not have Vista disk with me. There is windows sticker with the key at the back side. Being old its key is not clear. Now how can I install vista and activate it?

Also need to know whether I can be able upgrade it to win7 or 8 for free?

 

Your PC probably has a hidden partition containing Vista on it, which should be accessible by some sort of computer recovery management.

 

I don't have that partition

 

Strange, as you don't have the partition, I suggest you find an ISO of your edition (look for Vista version and architecture type 32-bit/x86 or 64-bit/x64) if you can, make sure it isn't a touched one though.

I can't provide a link here though, just look on the internet for one. You'll need to burn it to a DVD and make it bootable.

Make sure you download an ISO from the time when you got your PC - if you had Service Pack 1 when you bought your PC, make sure you get an ISO for Vista SP1, or your product key might not work.

If you don't remember your product key, there are free tools around to get it from your computer's settings, if you're using a laptop it could be on the bottom or in the box, on a desktop it would have been on the CD or in the box.

(If you have any more problems with anything or want to help somebody else here, just post here.)

 

Thanks a lot dear for your explanation...

Product key sticker is tool old to read the letters. Could you please give any link to get my product key?
Currently my laptop is installed with win8; it is not getting activated. If I can find the vista product key, can I use that for windows8?

 

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Download the program, extract it and you should find your product key for Vista.
Since you have Windows 8 not active, I don't think it will work.

I don't think it is illegal to use a product key generator for Vista if you lost the key and cannot find it anywhere - if you have the box, did you check if there's a key in there?

 

So far I know OEM license is given based on hardware id. MS activation server stores the hardware id. So, even if I lost the key, it shuld be auto activated through online. Am I right?

I need to know whether I can get upgrade to windows7 or later versions for free for my laptop.

 

You probably can't get a free upgrade, because Windows 7 mainstream support ended in January, but you can get an upgrade to (gasp) Windows 10.

I'm not too sure for your first statement, though. I don't know if MS knows what computer you are using, but you can't use a key that has been currently used on another PC. So perhaps you can, but I'm not sure.