Mike Easter wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:
My question is this, neither computer came
with a Win 7 Pro CD

Those XPS & Optiplex Dells come w/ a recovery part and utility for
making backup media images.


His Optiplex 780 is a JoySystems-style refurb.

And a few years back, you used to be able to get a
hologram DVD with the Windows 7 Pro Refurbisher on it.
(The person doing the refurbishing, would contact
Microsoft and get DVD+refurbkey, as part of the kit.
Today, the refurbisher goes to the website and only
gets a key, no DVD. They stopped shipping the DVD a number
of years ago.)

I have the DVD.

Since the essence of the DVD, is the .wim or .esd, that's
the part that needs comparison to other available medias,
to see if there is anything special about it. There is
likely nothing about that DVD which is out-of=the-ordinary.

The Heidoc site is now rather hobbled, in its ability to
generate URLs for downloading Windows 7 Pro. So that era
is just about finished. There's not much point in sending
a person to Heidoc today, as the chances of them having
a key to generate a URL, they've probably exhausted them
for this month. And the DigitalRiver downloads stopped
years ago.

I have a Retail Win7 Pro, and I've used the "official" Microsoft
site, to test the download capability. It works. But other
license key types, such as a Dell key, such as a Refurbisher
key, those won't work. The download site rejects attempts
to use those perfectly valid keys, because they're "OEM",
and the OEMs, I don't think they're allowed to offer downloads
either. A bit of a Catch-22 for OEM owners.

So, yeah, it is a bit late in the OS cycle, to be looking
for a Win7 disc :-/

There have been occasions where they end up on a Google Drive
or on archive.org, but it doesn't take long for the
site owner to notice and zap them.

Paul