Bob--

Upgrade Situations (which are not the situation where you buy from an OEM
manufacturer like Dell or a store with Vista pre-loaded on an OS). I
haven't seen any Vista computers in the stores that already have them where
a full edition of Vista has not been pre-loaded onto them. I also
regrettably have not seen these computers which sell for $1000-$4000 that
give the buyer a *Vista DVD for their hard earned money.

Buyer Beware: You will not be able to reach the Win RE Startup Repair,
Bootrec.exe, and System Restore from the Vista Recovery Win RE environment
environment (all previously referenced on this thread) to fix your Vista
computer without a Vista DVD. The Recovery DVDs will not do this., and they
most likely will not recover you and most likely (above 90%) can't be used
to fix major broken components in Vista in a situation where you can boot to
Vista.

I just saw the upgrade component for your question. Your question mixes two
scenarios. One scanario is a machine with Vista on it. That would be
typically an OEM box from some manufacturer via their site or a bricks and
mortar store. My caveat already posted applies there.

The other would be the upgrade scenario Rick addressed:

In order to use an upgrade for Vista, you must first have a legacy OS
installed and activated and you upgrade from it. This is firm in Vista.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...radepaths.mspx

How to install Windows Vista (See upgrade section of this MSKB)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918884/en-us

Good luck,

CH


"bob 9876" <bob9876@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:18F020BB-1594-4F3A-85E0-FE48410C6C9F@microsoft.com...
> tuesday jan 29 2007.buying anew machine with vista on it.if you buy at
> same time an upgrade to vista version. what form will it take ?a dvd with
> upgrade onit already to install. no downloading needed? thanks