Hello,
A while back I made a post asking if I could fix version of fedora because for some reason the background was making it crash. This problem goes unfixed to this day. I later found out that the specific laptop I was using came pre installed with Windows Vista. To the people who helped me with the original problem, thank you. But I now ask a new question: Can I install the os originally on the laptop without using a disk, and without logging. And if I can, how?
Vista is currently unsupported and obsolete, but the machine may be able to run windows 10 (which will also become unsupported in another year)
It may be possible to find old (bootleg) copies of Vista to install somewhere on the internet but finding the activation key might be more difficult.
But if it was preinstalled at the factory, shouldn’t the system partition still be there? Or is it wiped when you install something new?
It’s probably not ideal to (try to) switch back to Vista, that OS was discontinued in early 2017 and wouldn’t receive security updates anymore. Third party software might also work not well anymore due to discontinued support.
If a recovery partition was there it might still be, but you would need to have access to a working Windows environment first to use it. So that probably wouldn’t help at this stage.
The background issue you mentioned experiencing on Fedora is most likely something that can be fixed quite easily with some attention, so you could try that route first without considering more drastic steps. Judging from the photos in the other thread your Fedora is up and running, those would be the most important prerequisites to proceed.