Reinstall of Windows Vista Home Basic on Vostro A860

You should be able to contact Dell Technical Support and Request a Reinstallation DVD. The customer numbers are available here.

You will likely only get the same installation DVD/language that was shipped with your system.

If you are charged, before paying you should consider looking at the prices of a Windows 7 or 8 Upgrade License which will offer superior performance to Vista. Once you have Windows 8 Professional you should be able to switch language fairly easily:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/language#1TC=t1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2607607

Thank u for your reply :) i think the main reason why the laptop slows down so considerably is that there is a lot of dirt near the cooler. i just tried to get into it and to clean it, but after removing all screws i found i was only able to get close to the cooling device. as i was afraid to break the device i put everything together again and think i will try to fix this heating problem somehow different ... Or is there a document available which tells step by step how to clean the cooling system once it get dirty and is not able to cool adequately?

I guess you referred to the Service Manual: 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

This gives you the deassembly instructions.

Your best bet is to use a can of Dust-Off and a vacuum cleaner (on a gentle setting).

Remove the AC adapter and battery and ensure the system is switched off otherwise you may damage the fan which will cause more problems.

Spray the dust off through all the vents and then apply the vacuum cleaner.

Note if you are going to deassemble the processor heat sink, you will need to reapply thermal paste when reaseembling it. There are an assortment of YouTube videos discussing how to apply thermal paste.

Another thing you can do to combat overheatting is use of a USB cooling pad.

From the image in the Service Manual your computer base should look like:

Consider purchasing a laptop cooling mat. This is an additional fan and is powered by the USB port. You can generally get them in large supermarkets.

Be careful when purchasing one, that it has a solid base and not just legs.

I like this product AWE61EU and the fans look to be in the right place for your vents (from the image above):

http://www.targus.com/uk/product_details.asp?sku=AWE61EU

http://www.targus.com/pdfviewer/temp/AWE61EU_6.pdf

Another product I like is the ThermalTake T500 but looks less suitable for your model:

As the majority of your vents will be blocked by plastic. Although the top fans will align slightly with the vents.

The ThermalTake Massive 23LX

Might be slightly better but the fan is in the very middle and you don't want your vents covered by plastic.

I haven't tried any of the fanless products:

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Products.aspx?C=1135

Ones with legs although generally cheaper when put on your lap will jam as the fans will hit your legs and will actually cause the laptop to overheat more.

Also the vents aren't in a great position for your vents.

I'm not sure where to purchase in Canada however likely your local large supermarket Asda/Walmart/Tesco will have them.

One other way to reduce heat in the laptop would be to replace your hard drive with a Solid State Hard Drive (if one isn't present). Solid State Drives have no mechanical parts and hence produce less heat. These can be obtained from Crucial e.g. the Crucial M4 series of SSD.

I recently installed Windows 7 on a different home group desktop,without realising that I had to buy a separate product key for each desktop.The one month free use has expired and I have been prompted to buy a product key which I don't want to do.I was was happy with the Windows Vista Home premium.How can I revert to the latter.I should be grateful for some advice.Thank you.

Do you have a Dell Windows Vista Reinstallation DVD? If not you will not be able to reinstall Windows Vista once upgrading.

Windows Vista is also becoming obsolete, no IE10/11, Office 2013 support and alot of new hardware does not have any drivers being written for Vista.

One thing you can also do is install Windows 10 TP and take advantage of any promotional discounts and the upgrade path of Windows 10 TP to Windows 10 RTM. See here for details:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-10-technical-preview-iso/