I bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 from someone at work. He bought it at a pawn shop and took Vista off and installed XP Pro.He said the XP Pro doesn't have a product key because it was a PROTO type or something like that. I can't get updates from Microsoft because of this. I looked for a place to order a recovery disk from Dell but I couldn't find it. Can someone provide a link to find a recovery disk?I talked to dell on the phone. They won't sell me a recovery CD because I am not the original owner. I guess i will buy a NEW operating system.Well yes and no. Yes if you want a "legal' copy of a windows operating system=yes. However as an alternative with minimal loss of  use of the computer you could install a VERSION of Linux. It is free. The current version and seems to be very easy to use id "Mint  version Julia". Suggest you go to another computer google it and read up on it and see if you would like to give it a whirl. truenorthThe recovery partition is located on the hard drive, F12 at the Dell "splash screen" will reinstall Vista to the "as shipped" condition.Boy i sure hope for the O/P's sake that does work,truenorthSelecting F12 got me to the boot menu with no option for recovery. Try Ctrl + F11 at boot. The Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity sticker and Product key on the Laptop, is it still intact?Yes it isIf he wiped the drive and installed XP, it's possible he destroyed the recover partition in the process. Shame. Not sure they'd do something like that. The Vista that CAME with that laptop can't be used anywhere else.

Anyway, if you have the COA with the code on the bottom of the laptop, borrow someone's Vista disc. You'll still have to download all of the drivers from Dell and install it all manually.