Dell Inspiron 15 with crashed disk (laptops, hard drive, crash, server)

[irman]

My aunt has a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop with a crashed disk.

It does have the driver disk, but no recovery disk.
I do have a genuine Windows 7 installation disk with the key !!

Question:
Can I just replace the hard drive with a new one, and then install win 7 on that drive, and then later install all the drivers, or do I *have to have* the Dell recovery disk ?

The warranty is way past, thus no possibility to get a recovery disk from Dell !
You can only get one if you have a valid not yet expired warranty from Dell ... (bummer)

Also, if anybody does have a Dell Inspiron 15, do you have the recovery disk ?
If yes, can I have a copy of it ?
I am willing to pay for a copy plus shipping, etc.

TIA

[NHDave]

Look at the COA sticker on the bottom of the laptop to see if you have Home or Pro, then go to the link below and download the correct ISO, create an installation DVD, and reinstall using the laptops product key.. These are legal downloads provided by Microsoft.

http://techverse.net/download-window...icial-servers/

[Pruzhany]

How to manually reinstall Windows 7 on a Dell computer | Dell US

[NHDave]

Originally Posted by Pruzhany

How to manually reinstall Windows 7 on a Dell computer | Dell US

Kind of pointless as the OP stated they don't have the Dell recovery media

[Pruzhany]

Originally Posted by NHDave

Kind of pointless as the OP stated they don't have the Dell recovery media

Put on your glasses and start at step 3.

It does have the driver disk, but no recovery disk.
I do have a genuine Windows 7 installation disk with the key !!

Load Windows and then load drivers.

[NHDave]

Originally Posted by Pruzhany

Put on your glasses.

Load Windows and then load drivers.

You're making assumptions, the OP hasn't stated whether or not the product key he has is already in use. Either way my suggestion (using the product key the laptop shipped with) is the better method.

[Pruzhany]

Originally Posted by NHDave

You're making assumptions, the OP hasn't stated whether or not the product key he has is already in use. Either way my suggestion (using the product key the laptop shipped with) is the better method.

Let's assume its not.

I do have a genuine Windows 7 installation disk with the key

[NHDave]

Originally Posted by Pruzhany

Let's assume its not.

I always assume it is, as people usually don't realize the can't install it multiple times. Either way (again) my method is best, why use the license if it's unused when the Dell has a valid product key that can be used.

[irman]

Update.
Did some more tests on the disk (Google is often not half bad !) and found out, the drive did not physically crash !
Software was completely messed up.

Took the drive out, mount as external drive on other computer, and completely reformatted it.
Then re-installed in laptop, and made sure the boot sequence was correct.
Loaded Win 7 on it (this copy was an extra one, and never installed before)
Activated it and loaded the drivers. Took all night to do this !!! Over 170 updates !

Result, a perfectly working Dell laptop that does not have anything Dell on it ... is it (!) or (?)
Instead of having a separate partition for the Dell recovery, I just made a recovery disk, and then after reloading all programmes (all original disk were available !), made a full back up (on 2 external drives).

Total cost 80 green ones for the original Win 7 copy !!
(Newegg, had a deal for Win7 Pro copies (OEM versions) for 80 bucks a piece a while back, so I bought 4 copies)
The original OS was Win7 Home Prem
Not half bad for a laptop, no ?
Checked the stats and it is a 5.3 score on that test in the control panel ...

Really strange thing I found out ...
When I opened up the laptop to remove the drive, there were two 4 Gig pieces of memory in it !!
Why would Win7 Home Premium need 8 gigs ?
She bought the unit in 2011, and now I wonder if they *sold* her more than she needed ?

Thanks for all the comments.

P.S.
Why is it so difficult to get service on a unit that is past its warranted time ?
Reading up on their website, you feel like you are BOUND to only use *their* stuff !
You MUST have this and you MUST have that ....
Why are laptops NOT shipped with some kind of *easy* recovery ?
Maybe some of them are ?
How many computer NON gurus really know what to do right after you buy a laptop ?
By the way ... , when I loaded the driver disk, nothing was loaded ????
It only created a directory called Resource disk ! Nothing in it !
Everything (!) seems to work !

[irman]

Originally Posted by NHDave

Look at the COA sticker on the bottom of the laptop to see if you have Home or Pro, then go to the link below and download the correct ISO, create an installation DVD, and reinstall using the laptops product key.. These are legal downloads provided by Microsoft.

http://techverse.net/download-window...icial-servers/

Just a note of warning !!

Make darn sure (I have no idea how?) that the place, you do download this from, is not putting any funny stuff on your computer ...

I did download the *original* Win7 Home Premium from there, just in case the disk I had (Win7 Pro) would not work.
I got the copy alright, and it seems clean, but my computer started to complain like crazy.
So I did a cleaning and there were 15 (fifteen) PUP's on it !!
Took two cleaning passes and a recovery to an earlier date and then reloading the updates again, to get it clean !!

I wonder why you won't be able to get it straight from MS ?