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I should know this but don't, I've done a bit of googling but can't find it obviously so I'm hoping someone has done this before.
So my son has a laptop running windows 7 home premium. He wants me to wipe and reinstall it and to be fair, it really does need it. It has crap all over the place, runs like a dog and has a load of Dell propriety stuff install cocking things up.
Now I have a windows 7 Pro install disk for my home computer.
I'm fairly certain I can recover his product key (there seems to be various tools out there) before I wipe so the question is....
Can I install my windows 7 pro and use his product key to activate it? My understanding was that they were all pretty much the same product but the key activated different parts of the functionality...
His product key should be on a sticker on the laptop.
I've half a memory that either Vista or W7 is the same install media and activates based on key (and the other isn't). I'd have to look it up to be 100% sure though.
Theoretically, you may well be able to use your disc and his key to reinstall Home Premium. There's probably a Dell 'recovery' solution which will do it automagically though, unless you've already repartitioned the drive and killed it.
If he has a webcam, and cares about having it working, be aware that they often don't after a reinstallation
(I am a bad dad 🙁 )
Got another machine you can run something like VMWare workstation on? Install and activate windows with the key on there and see if it works?!?!
[url= http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/ ]http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/[/url]
On another note, Windows Easy Transfer wizard can probably help transfer user profile if he wants to keep it, use to copy onto external drive and then back onto reimaged machine once done:
[url= http://www.w7forums.com/windows-easy-transfer-t829.html ]http://www.w7forums.com/windows-easy-transfer-t829.html[/url]
Veering off a different direction, do you have the original dell media? Our work ones come with dell branded but 'clean' installations of Windows 7 (ok it may have the dell branding in he control panel but nothing else). The 'crap' is loaded on afterwards from the 2nd driver/support disc, & can be avoided
I have a Dell branded Win 7 Premium Re-install disk that came with my XPS desktop. With that and the sticker Key on the Laptop you should be able to do a full re-install.
Bear in mind the serial number will only work if you install from the same windows7 build version.
You can download the I so for whatever build you need - digital river I think??
I just did my Sony VAIO SB laptop as a clean install with a new ssd. Took a good couple of hours but I had a guide to follow and all hardware drivers available from sonys support site... Probably 30 odd drivers.
Got everything working fine but without the helpful guide, it'd have been a challenge!
I reinstalled recently on my desktop without any problems took the key Ok. Only problem I can see with yours is the key on Dell is often for certain versions only or it use to be for XP. Install it and if there's any trouble call Microsoft and give them the key on the Dell they will sort you out.
No sticker on the laptop and there's no obvious re-image partition on the laptop (plus it's a 320G hard drive and seems to use most of that on the windows partition). I'd already checked for those things. No disk came with it and while I'm sure the key would be with the documentation, he's lost that.
That said, there does appear to be a number of different methods for recovering the default image on Dell's, I'd only tried one. I'll try the others, see if that works.
Many thanks.
I thought that usually you could do a factory restore. It varies from model to model but often it is something like presing F8 during backup and then selecting that option. Try googling the model number and 'factory restore'. It would save you having to find all the relevant drivers afterwards
apologies if I'm telling you something that you have already tried.
Windows 7 (Basic, Home Premium and Pro) can be downloaded as an ISO from Microsoft. Burn the ISO, install and then use your key. Otherwise, just reinstall from the recovery partition! Ctrl F10 at boot-up should get you into the Recovery software.
As the last two posts - a lot of recent machines have a recovery partition that will do this without the logistical headaches of serial keys, drivers etc.
I don't think you can use the W7 pro disk, because the license key will most likely be for W7 Home Premium.
If you have to do a system restore, you can go back in and remove all the Dell crap. There should be loads of advice online about that - it's well worth it.
Thanks guys. I'll do a bit more research. So far I've found F8, Ctrl F10, Ctrl F11 and pressing R at boot up all as suggested methods for recovering a Dell laptop from the image partition. 😉
And his model does overwhelmingly appear to be just F8.
so what happened?!
Sorry, just got back to this.
Right so F8 took me to the right place, tried to recover the factory image then it fails saying can't write to partition. I try and chkdisk it which finds nothing. Boot it up with a linux flash drive, do some block checking, seems fine. Write a linux filesystem to it, mount it, all fine.
Back to windows, try and format the drive, it takes all night to get to 3%, give up. DOwnload Home Preium ISO, boot up with that, tell it to repair the partition. It says this partition cannot be written too, disk is about to fail.
SO I google that, suggests wiping the partition, recreating it, reformat, try and drop windows onto it again. Do all that fine, try and restore, fails again. Try and install windows from the iso, same message, disk is about to fail.
Dunno now then. I can see all three partitions in linux and windows, just windows doesn;t want to write to the main partition. The only option left to me now is pulling the hard drive (means dismantling the laptop, mounting it in my home PC and see if that can partition/reformat the main partition and see it as a drive.