I was very frustrated that my XP Home Premium was corrupted again. I called up the computer shops but most of them don’t work during the weekends, and asked me to get back to them on Monday. However, I don’t want to lose using my laptop during the weekdays when there will be more offers. Thus, I decided to upgrade to Vista or reformat the laptop by myself.

Bear in mind that I am a computer idiot. A simple CSS or HTML file can make me crawl up the wall and scream for help already. So, I told myself that things screwed up during the installation, I will just dumb the laptop and get a new one. LOL!

Before that, I called up Dell Support and they told me that they don’t support software. Good, that leaves me to no choice but to search for computer shop for help. Then, the guy from Dell told me that if I’m eager to reformat by myself, he could help me out, but it would take more than 2 hours over the phone. I had forgotten that I was calling a toll free, and I didn’t have 2 hours for it during the day. But he told me that I could check out www.windowsreinstall.com for more information.

So, at 2am last night, I decided to work this out by myself. I checked out the site given and with simple instruction and screenshots, it looked very easy to me. So, I just went for it! It took a few hours to get the installation done, but I didn’t sleep through it because my kids woke up a few times. So whenever my beauty sleep was disturbed, I checked on the installation. 3 hours later, I woke up and saw that it was ready.

I have been using my laptop a few times today, and so far so good. Everything seems to be working well, except some softwares which are needed to be upgraded since they are not compatible to Vista. So, why am I going back to Vista? Frankly, I am not sure. I have both the license for XP and Vista. So the desktop will be operating in XP and my laptop in Vista. Let’s see what’s the different and why are there so many fuss about Vista!