My house is a total wreck, and back a few months ago, I moved everything out of a couple of rooms to make room for a lan party I was hosting.

This is the first time I have needed my vista disk since install, so its gone for months without being seen. Now trying to find it....its unlikely. I have no idea if it walked off when my house was being house sat by my wifes friend, or its just at the bottom of a box pile in my garage.

Anyhow, I retrieved my serial number from the reg, and I picked up a copy of vista ultimate(same as my version) when I was in Thailand just incase this happened.

Question is, will it work? I remember something about serial sets, each disk only had one set of serials that would work with it. I don't know if they did something similar with Vista or not.

I have a reciept (thank god I am married), my serial, and my manual, just not the box and disk. If my thai copy won't work, do I have any hope of getting a replacement disk from Microsoft? I know talking about backups is frowned upon, but I do have a legit copy, and can prove it should I need to to microsoft. As far as I remember when I ran my IT department, your license is your serial number, not the disk. There was no ethical dilema installing 100 copies of front page off the same disk for example.

Anyhow, any advice would be appriciated. I will continue looking, but there is a very good possibility its stolen or will never be found. I can't wait due to technical issues, and can't afford to drop $600 additional dollars for a new copy. I need to know what options are available.

Thanks

Very few options but the final one is to contact Microsoft themselves and tell them your Serial/Product No and see if they can send you a replacement CD (next time make a copy of it!)