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MateiN

3 Posts

3200

May 19th, 2018 00:00

Windows 7 recovery

Dear All,

I have bought a dell XPS 17 about 7 years ago with a Windows Home premium license. Around 2 days ago my harddisk seems to have failed so I am trying to install a new harddisk on the laptop.

The problem is that when I tried to use the Dell OS recovery tool to get a copy of windows to install on the new HDD, I get the message "No OS images defined for the product". I find this very strange as my service number works on the dell website to identify my laptop and I seem to have a windows licence on my laptop(with the product key written and everything).

Does anyone know what should I do ?

Thank you for your help,

Matei

ejn63

10 Elder

 • 

23.1K Posts

May 19th, 2018 04:00

If you want to keep WIndows 7 and did not make backup recovery media when you were prompted to do so upon turning the system on the first time, try EBay - sellers will often have Dell OEM recovery discs available for sale at low cost (the license key is in the battery compartment).

Dell and Microsoft no longer ship Windows 7 media -- and with 7 going end of life in about 18 months, there's not much time left for this OS.

 

jphughan

4 Operator

 • 

14K Posts

May 19th, 2018 07:00

If you have the Windows 7 product key that came with your system (usually on a sticker on the underside or in the battery compartment) you can download Windows 7 from Microsoft here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

jphughan

4 Operator

 • 

14K Posts

May 19th, 2018 07:00

Additional tip if you end up reinstalling Windows 7. You’ll want to manually download a few other updates beforehand. Windows 7 SP1 is very old by now, so if you don’t do this, you could spend many hours installing hundreds of updates over several reboots, in fact nowadays it can take hours for Windows Update on a fresh SP1 install to even figure out what needs to be downloaded. The updates below will avoid that. Just Google the KB numbers to find the download links. This assumes you start from SP1, otherwise download and install that first, then install these updates in this order:

- KB3020369: April 2015 Servicing Stack Update (required to install subsequent updates)

- KB3125574: Windows 7 Convenience Update (takes you from SP1's February 2011 state all the way to April 2016 in one big package rather than hundreds of individual updates)

- KB3172605: July 2016 Update Rollup (includes the fix for very long Windows Update scan times, so after installing this, you may still have a few dozen updates, but at least you won't be waiting potentially hours for them to even start downloading).

MateiN

3 Posts

May 21st, 2018 04:00

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your answer. Unfortunately I cannot get Windows directly from Microsoft, when I tried it I got the message: "The product key you entered appears to be for software pre-installed by the device manufacturer. Please contact the device manufacturer for software recovery options."

MateiN

3 Posts

May 21st, 2018 04:00

Thank you very much for your answer. I will probably need to buy a copy of Windows 10.

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