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I was going through my usual day at work with my laptop,when it crashed,corrupted the drive,and rendered it useless,unless I reformat the drive itself.

But,I somehow lost the disc and the product key that I used to install Win7 to that laptop(I hated WinXp on the laptop,so I switched to 7)and now I'm writing this question on a workmate's computer.

How do I re-install Win7?

I don't want to waste money again just for a new disc.

And also,I eventually gave up,and resorting to a site called GetIntoPc.com,downloading one of their untouched isos,and realized,I have no idea of installing this without a product key.

Pls. tell me a solution,and if this absolutely makes no sense.

user219095
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Ryekseu
  • 33

2 Answers2

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  1. Take out laptop's HDD and put it in a USB enclosure so you can access it from another PC. Hopefully the drive's partition table and file table are still intact to allow access to the relevant files.

  2. Use ProduKey, load the Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE registry hive from the HDD and retrieve your key.

  3. Download the appropriate version of Windows 7 and reinstall. If you already have an ISO be very sure it is untouched (compare with known MD5/SHA1 hashes) and free from malware.

Community
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Karan
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If you have a totally solid proof of purchase, you might be able to convince Microsoft to give you a new key. Other than that, it’s simply bad luck. You should acquire a new key/license ASAP because Windows 7 consumer sales have stopped.

user219095
  • 65,551