restoring dell laptop running windows vista

My girlfriend laptop Dell XPS M1330 running vista has more likely been corrupted with virus and is mal functioning. A few inportant steps to note for myself that may not be obvious:

- backup important data by manually copying User folders to external hard drive using an ubuntu linux cd
- perform factory backup *** by clicking F8 on boot up=> system repair -> login and choose factory recovery... This step is not obvious and there is no menu option in regular windows log in to do this.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied&docid=DSN_336966&isLegacy=true

A week on "network path not found" error

This whole week, I have been reading madly to set up Active Directory and Domain Name service on windows server 2008 and windows 7 clients. Learned that DNS is the KEY to understand and configure AD-DS. But what's more? before even configure DNS, set up computers to connect and share/access resource can be tricky.

The error: network path not found
when I try to join a client computer to a domain. Thought it must be some AD-DS error. But hang on, let me try to do simple file sharing...and yes...I got the same error. The frustration is that I can ping and dns test with nslookup fine the server. Even when all firewalls on server are turned off.

the solution.
Network adapter setting must be set properly for
clients: - check Client for Microsoft Networks
server: File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Network <= ****** key solution without this no effort works - and I have figure it out today Friday after a long struggling week with nothing done but madly reading.