Reinstalling windows 7 without disk

[daniel508]

Hi all,
I have a dell laptop that has finished it's warranty. I decided to upgrade the hard drive on it as 5400RPM wasn't really cutting it.
however, I do not have a windows 7 home premium disk. dell said that they won't send me one out because im not covered anymore.
so I was wondering, would other window 7 home premium work? I would of course be using my product key but i'm not sure whether it would activate?
any ideas guys?
Cheers.

 

[Rizlla]

I don't think Microsoft would like that option. I would recommend you to buy a Genuine Windows 7 installation disk. Other option is you can give Microsoft a call and hear from them.

 

[howardp6]

You can buy an Apricorn - EZ Upgrade Hard Drive Enclosure and put you new drive in it and copy the entire disk and then swap the hard drive and the use the old hard drive as a external hard drive. OEM versions of Windows 7 are usually tied to the hard drive they were originally installed on, so you may not jave much luck with Microsoft. You should always buy thd operating systems disks, when you buy your compute. It costs a lot less. Reinstalling the OS will not copy over the programs and setting you have on your machine, which you may or may not have the installation disks for.

 

[daniel508]

the OEM versions are tied with the comptuers yes, but thats with motherboard serial, processor and everything else taken into account. a few sources say hat it will work whilst others don't. I guess it's going to be a trial and error!

 

[howardp6]

Downloading a ISO version from a torrent may have a Virus or Trojan.

 

[electrontau]

Create your own recovery DVDs. Info is stored in your original hard drive. Just open the application in Windows and burn the DVDs (appx 4 DVDs). You can use these DVDs to install OS and all original Dell apps in the new hard drive (just like your first bought it).