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When I purchased my computer with Windows 7 Professional Installed, the installation disk did not come with it.
Now I need to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows, ... but no disk.
The PC does have the COA label on it (with the number)..... so if I could get a copy of Windows 7, I guess that would work,. . . but where can I find just a re-install disk ?
Shops want to charge $100 plus keep my computer for a week.
Your hard drive is partitioned into drive C: and D:. Your installation disk is on the D: drive. Unless your D: drive is corrupt, you can set your computer back to the "factory settings" and reinstall the operating system from drive D: you will have essentially wiped your hard drive (C) clean. And start with a fresh installation of windows and any other software that came with it.
Also.. Once you have recovered your operating system... You can make a recovery disk for just such emergencies.
Windows will give you the option to make the recovery disk during the re- install or you can make a copy from control panel.
Last edited by Sydney123; 01-25-2015 at 03:47 PM..
You can contact the manufacturer. There are many different version of Windows 7 installation disk and they will not work with your COA key code.
Yep call support for your computer make. Most charge about 12-15 bucks and it has very thing to load as when new. I always buy one when getting a new computer.
Your hard drive is partitioned into drive C: and D:. Your installation disk is on the D: drive. Unless your D: drive is corrupt, you can set your computer back to the "factory settings" and reinstall the operating system from drive D: you will have essentially wiped your hard drive (C) clean. And start with a fresh installation of windows and any other software that came with it.
Also.. Once you have recovered your operating system... You can make a recovery disk for just such emergencies.
Windows will give you the option to make the recovery disk during the re- install or you can make a copy from control panel.
When I purchased my computer with Windows 7 Professional Installed, the installation disk did not come with it.
Now I need to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows, ... but no disk.
The PC does have the COA label on it (with the number)..... so if I could get a copy of Windows 7, I guess that would work,. . . but where can I find just a re-install disk ?
Shops want to charge $100 plus keep my computer for a week.
.
You can write offisial dist from microsoft site and write it to your disk or usb. Your code will work with this dist, but only on your pc(hdd, motherboard, etc.).
Your hard drive is partitioned into drive C: and D:. Your installation disk is on the D: drive. Unless your D: drive is corrupt, you can set your computer back to the "factory settings" and reinstall the operating system from drive D: you will have essentially wiped your hard drive (C) clean. And start with a fresh installation of windows and any other software that came with it.
Also.. Once you have recovered your operating system... You can make a recovery disk for just such emergencies.
Windows will give you the option to make the recovery disk during the re- install or you can make a copy from control panel.
This indeed!
So when you go to turn on a PC usually during startup (before going into Windows) it tells you to hit some F key or Delete or something (it varies with the make/model of the motherboard what BIOS is on it) to get into your boot options or BIOS where you will find the option to restore the computer to its factory settings. It's a means to reload Windows as you wish but without the disk. Basically they have partitioned off part of your hard drive to contain this information that would otherwise be on the disk, instead of sending you a physical copy. They've been doing that for quite a while now, the folks at Dell and others that sell computers.
What I've learned from building my own computers in recent years...
The thing you were thinking OP, just getting another copy of the software someplace (hopefully cheaper than $100) and using the key code you have, the reason that won't work is that your machine (and its associated product code for the OS, on that sticker) are what they call an OEM copy of Windows. For system builders to install on systems they are selling. The $100-ish copies are, too. So the copy of the software, the license you are using, and the system's actual hardware are all linked together and registered together and they don't want you to be able to part them.
You could install a new copy of Windows on your computer but you'd need a new code that goes with it. You might be able to get that legitimately for less than $100 (I've seen sales and rebates on TigerDirect and Newegg in the past) but I wouldn't trust my operating system to some shady dealer/pirate copy/hacked code version no matter how cheap or free it seems to be. Nope!
It has been established that you can swap out some hardware components without needing a new copy of Windows, if for instance you were upgrading your RAM or your hard drive, but no one seems to know exactly how much before MS considers it a different machine and requires you to buy a new OS with a new license. You can no longer take your copy of Windows and your code and install it on computer after computer, unless you buy a version of Windows that comes with multiple licenses, as they might provide to say, businesses for many machines. That will cost more, of course.
I know it seems easier to pop in the disk (and that's why a new machine that doesn't come with one will usually prompt you to burn a system recovery disk on a DVD) but you should be able to fix this through the partitioned factory restore functionality....and that will save you some $$.
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