Word in Win7 vs. XP

GS wrote:

I didn't know about OEM downloads being available and so would
appreciate any refs you can give about source.

The "electronic downloads" for Windows 7 are hosted at Digital River, an
authorized e-tailer of Microsoft products. The "backup downloads" of MS
Office are at Microsoft's site. Because of these downloads is why there
are sellers of just the product keys and license: you get the product
key, COA sticker, but no software because you're supposed to then go
download the software. Since you have the product keys, maybe all you
have to get are the trial versions and then validate them with the
[purchased] product keys before the 30-day trial expires. I haven't
tried using trials to see if they validate to full-blown versions.

In the last instance (that I can remember) of salvaging a broken PC with
OEM software was where I got a broken PC for free from a buddy (Brad).
It was his brother's (Rick's) gaming PC that "broke". Rick figured Brad
could fix it but keep it since Rick already bought a new PC. Brad
couldn't figure out what was wrong or didn't want to bother fixing it
(since Rick didn't want it back) and gave it to me free. My home
desktop PC had died and I was using a laptop as a replacement. Rick, of
course, couldn't find the Windows 7 and MS Office 2010 software discs
both of which were OEM licenses. So I had the product keys but no
installers. The Windows 7 product key was on the the OEM sticker on the
case. The old hard drive was severely corrupted so Windows wouldn't
load. I slaved the old HDD under a new OS installed on a new disk to
extract the product key for MS Office from the old HDD.

The PC was definitely broken. It had okay quality components but the
PSU went bad. I'm not sure what Rick did to really screw up the file
system so normal tools couldn't fix it. I don't remember how I got the
old file system fixed enough to grab the Win7 HE OEM product key off of
it (the HDD itself was okay). If I hadn't gotten the Win7 OEM key, I'd
probably still have WinXP and MS Office 2003 on this salvaged host. The
PSU was known to be dead. A new HDD was needed just in case I the old
HDD was really bad instead of just a ****ed up file system. About a
month later the video card died, I used the onboard video in the
interim, and shopped around for a new video card (since the onboard
video sucked for gaming). The only other defect was a broken onboard
temperature sensor that kept the CPU fan spinning at max speed.
Speedfan fixed that problem using softwa the fan spins at max speed
until Windows boot and I login (and I usually leave PCs powered 24x7 so
it's rare I have to listen to a loud fan).

Now I had the keys but no software. They were OEM licenses and I now
owned the computer on which they were installed so those licenses were
mine. Although I took the dead PC from my buddy, I had no clue if I
could fix it. I figured if he couldn't then I couldn't but it turns out
my hardware expertise is as greater for me than him as his programming
expertise excels over me. He's yin, I'm yang.

For Windows 7 "backup" download, I went to:

heidoc.net

which had the download links from Digital River. They also list the MS
backup downloads but I recall that I read somewhere else about where to
get those Office backup downloads.

mydigitallife.info also had an article giving the Digital River links
for the Windows 7 ISO downloads. Someone said the Digital River links
are now offline yet the couple of DR links I just tested still work. I
didn't save a URL to the web page with the link but instead saved the
web page which has the links. The web page could go away even if the DR
links were still valid so I only wanted to save the DR links.

For MS Office "backup" downloads, I went to:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...103427465.aspx

At eBay, you can find lots of sellers that only sell the product key.
You have to use a download to get the installer to actually use the
software. So I knew the downloads were separately available. I already
had the product keys so I didn't want to pay for them again to find out
to where I would be told to get the downloads.

Again.., big thanks!
My reason for interest is a neighbor who can't find the OEM discs for
his laptop. It has Win7 HP installed and I want to do a 'clean install'
for him. Thus, I need to know where to download Win7!

--
Garry

Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org
ClassicVB Users Regroup!
comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion

GS wrote:

Again.., big thanks!
My reason for interest is a neighbor who can't find the OEM discs for
his laptop. It has Win7 HP installed and I want to do a 'clean install'
for him. Thus, I need to know where to download Win7!

If you want to eliminate the research to find the downloads and hope
they work, you could tell the neighbor to call the OEM'er (whoever built
his computer) to ask about getting replacement install discs. My step-
mother did that with Dell and, I think, it cost her about $19. The
discs were supposedly free which meant shipping and especially the
"handling" costs were pretty high.

If this was a pre-built computer, you sure there isn't a hidden
partition used for recovery to revert the OS partition back to a
factory-time image? Look at the POST screen to see if you hit a special
key to go into recovery mode.

VanguardLH formulated the question :
GS wrote:

Again.., big thanks!
My reason for interest is a neighbor who can't find the OEM discs for
his laptop. It has Win7 HP installed and I want to do a 'clean install'
for him. Thus, I need to know where to download Win7!

If you want to eliminate the research to find the downloads and hope
they work, you could tell the neighbor to call the OEM'er (whoever built
his computer) to ask about getting replacement install discs. My step-
mother did that with Dell and, I think, it cost her about $19. The
discs were supposedly free which meant shipping and especially the
"handling" costs were pretty high.

I believe this is an option. It's a laptop and according to the vendor,
replacement discs are available for a nominal fee.

If this was a pre-built computer, you sure there isn't a hidden
partition used for recovery to revert the OS partition back to a
factory-time image? Look at the POST screen to see if you hit a special
key to go into recovery mode.

I'll have a look!
Big thanks...

--
Garry

Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org
ClassicVB Users Regroup!
comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion