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February 16th, 2023 13:00
Installing Windows on New Hard Drive
Inspiron 7537
I have a dell Inspiron 7537 which is more than 7 years old and used as a secondary laptop. It was working fine until now but it's hard drive has died yesterday. I have ordered online a replacement Segate SSD drive to install.
My questions is - I did not receive any Windows CD with my purchase of Inspiron 7537. The laptop had Windows 8 installed which I did not upgrade to Windows 10. I can download the Windows ISO from Microsoft Website and put it in a disc and install but I would need an activation key. I called Dell and they were not able to provide a key. I am sure as a part of laptop purchase I purchase a license for windows as well. How can I have Windows 8 or higher activated on the laptop?
Thanks for your help.
filbert
4 Operator
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1.8K Posts
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February 16th, 2023 14:00
What you had was an OEM licence for Windows 8, not a full retail licence. The product key was likely embedded in BIOS, though updating the BIOS could have wiped that out. It may also have been present in a recovery partition.
If your drive is still somewhat readable, via a USB interface, you could connect it to another computer. You could use various utilities, such as NirSoft Produkey or bootable Linux tools, to try to find the product key from the Windows directory on that drive. If the drive is not readable but you have a full system image, you could restore that image to another drive and then do what I suggested to find the product key from there.
If you had upgraded to Windows 10 and Windows was properly activated, you could now reinstall Windows 10 and it would reactivate automatically upon communicating with Microsoft's database.
If you do find the product key, you may enter it when installing Windows 10. If you cannot find it, you can buy a Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key fairly inexpensively, then upgrade to Windows 10.
In either event, you should not continue to use Windows 8. Windows 8 is unsupported and insecure. It does not receive security patches, so it should no longer be used on a PC connected to the Internet.
John harper
2 Intern
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346 Posts
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March 1st, 2023 23:00
Install your new hard drive (or SSD) in your computer.
Plug in your Windows 10 installation USB drive or insert the Windows 10 disk.
Change the boot order in the BIOS to boot from your install media.
Boot to your Windows 10 installation USB drive or DVD.
Regards,
James