Hi, I've just bought a 2nd hand gateway mt6220 laptop with vista home basic on it and to change it to vista home premium. I have tried to do both an upgrade and clean install, It installs then goes into a gateway branded recovery consoleto try to get it back to home. When i tried to do a clean install i deleted the partition but it still came up with this error. Does anyone know how i can completely delete the partition so i can install vista. ps I have a vista recovery disc and created the driver disc so deleted the hidden partition.

Guess if vista's partition manager can't do it you could try one of the linux partition manager live cd's. Almost ever live cd has a partition tool. See gparted or any distro that has it. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Google DBAN (Darik's Boot & Nuke) to write zeros to the laptop's HDD. Once that is done, try to reload Vista again. http://www.dban.org/ Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

Hi, Thanks for the replies. Tried dban now when i install vista everything installs ok but on the final reboot all i get is the black screen with the vista loading thingie - the green lines going from left to right - and nothing further happens. I really don't undrstand this as the recovery disc just seems to be a copy of vista home basic with gateway on the disc and my copy of vista is a real one that i bought from pc world and it installs on my tower unit ok.