it really all depends if ur vista is real or pirated.. as in if u have a Dell or HP with a pre-built in Vista.. u should be able to strike for instance "F11" (Used on most HP laptop's) to access the Recovery partition to either do a soft-recovery (doesnt erase anything.. just places all original programs and drivers when it was purchased) ; Hard-Recovery (formats and restores to factory settings), etc.. so please tell me the specs on the rig.. whether its an OEM desktop or laptop and what the exact model $ is.. hope to hear from u soon so we can get u back up and running again, cheers~!~