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#16
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
slate_leeper aka Dan Z wrote:
My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. Lots of online articles about changing the license key for an existing installation. You would copy your backup image to the other computer and then change its license key to a legitimately purchased one. https://www.lifewire.com/how-do-i-ch...ct-key-2624930 Just in case, make sure you save a backup image of your Windows 10 setup should you decide to move back to it. |
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#17
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Buying Windows 7
On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 16:42:10 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
The product key shown on a sticker on the case is for a volume image of the OS that gets copied onto thousands of computers by the OEM'er. They don't validate every computer they manufacture. They copy an image (fixed) onto each computer. They get to use the volume license. You do not, so the product key shown on the sticker may not be valid for use by you. Use something like Magic Jellybean or Belarc Advisor to get the Windows 7 license key out of that instance of an install. That's the one you get to reuse. My Dell laptop was the other way around. The Windows key on the sticker was my unique key. Belarc reported the generic Dell key. -- Char Jackson |
#18
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Buying Windows 7
Ed Cryer wrote:
I'm fed up with Windows 10 on a machine I bought. I want Win7! I want Win7! This site offers Win7 Pro for 13.99 GBP. https://goo.gl/rBddg4 Has anybody bought this? Or does anyone know a better place? Ed Thanks for all your comments. They seem very wise to me, and I'll heed them. My main computer of choice runs under Win7. And it is stable, very stable; it's been stable for years, never throws a wobbly, does what it should and very pleasingly. It also runs some pretty modern hardware; a bluray writer, a 4TB powered external HD, large memory sticks. Viva Windows 7! Ed |
#19
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 15:56:16 +0200, Heirloom wrote:
slate_leeper wrote: On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 18:36:00 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: I'm fed up with Windows 10 on a machine I bought. I want Win7! I want Win7! Me too! My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. -dan z- Have you tried contacting Dell? Dell support has been no help on this. Their SupportAssist system won't run because it is in the Program Files directory AND they asked me to update it (which of course didn't work except to make it no longer work at all.) Besides, their support is on the Win-10 that came with it, not the Win-7 I want to put on it. -dan z- -- Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world. (Anonymous) |
#20
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 10:29:19 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
slate_leeper aka Dan Z wrote: My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. Lots of online articles about changing the license key for an existing installation. You would copy your backup image to the other computer and then change its license key to a legitimately purchased one. https://www.lifewire.com/how-do-i-ch...ct-key-2624930 Just in case, make sure you save a backup image of your Windows 10 setup should you decide to move back to it. Thank you for that info. It's the "legitimately purchased one" I really need more info on. How can I directly ask MS this question? Will they sell me one? -dan z- -- Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world. (Anonymous) |
#21
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
slate_leeper wrote:
On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 15:56:16 +0200, Heirloom wrote: slate_leeper wrote: On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 18:36:00 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: I'm fed up with Windows 10 on a machine I bought. I want Win7! I want Win7! Me too! My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. -dan z- Have you tried contacting Dell? Dell support has been no help on this. Their SupportAssist system won't run because it is in the Program Files directory AND they asked me to update it (which of course didn't work except to make it no longer work at all.) Besides, their support is on the Win-10 that came with it, not the Win-7 I want to put on it. -dan z- Did you ask them if they would sell you Win 7? |
#22
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
"slate_leeper" wrote
| Thank you for that info. It's the "legitimately purchased one" I | really need more info on. How can I directly ask MS this question? | Will they sell me one? | MS no longer sells Win7. The available sources are mostly OEMs that have leftover disks/licenses that they bought in bulk. You should be able to use one of those, but you'd need to carefully research the hardware to make sure you can get drivers for Win7: Determine exactly what you have for motherboard, sound, graphics, etc and then check with those companies for Win7 drivers. The problem with Dell, and the reason that it's not a good idea to buy Dell products, is that they package the whole system, making it opaque. On the one hand, if you're in business and only use Dell, getting a supported driver for a Dell product is a convenient process. It's like the AOL of OEMs. They hide the facts from you, but you also don't need to know the facts as long as you tay with their system. But in your case the downside of their system becomes clear. Since all the drivers are repackaged by Dell, it's not always feasible to cut out the Dell middleman and get the real driver directly from the hardware maker. In some cases, Dell parts might be custom-order, not existing on the open market. And their driver downloads are custom-wrapped versions of the actual drivers. Just as Home Depot might order 5 million drills from DeWalt and be selling model DW385002 while DeWalt doesn't actually acknowledge the existence of that model. They make 5000, 5001 and 5005. Will a replacement part fit 5002? Probably. But there's no way to be sure of exactly what's different. In the same way that Home Depot now supports (or doesn't) model 5002, Dell makes you go to them for hardware support. |
#23
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Buying Windows 7
Char Jackson wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: The product key shown on a sticker on the case is for a volume image of the OS that gets copied onto thousands of computers by the OEM'er. They don't validate every computer they manufacture. They copy an image (fixed) onto each computer. They get to use the volume license. You do not, so the product key shown on the sticker may not be valid for use by you. Use something like Magic Jellybean or Belarc Advisor to get the Windows 7 license key out of that instance of an install. That's the one you get to reuse. My Dell laptop was the other way around. The Windows key on the sticker was my unique key. Belarc reported the generic Dell key. Oops, yep, the other way around. The image is the same that gets puts on thousands of computers so it has the pre-validated volume key. The stickers get printed with different keys on them. The sticker won't match the key in the image. I need stronger coffee, or less interruptions. |
#24
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
slate_leeper wrote:
On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 10:29:19 -0500, VanguardLH wrote: slate_leeper aka Dan Z wrote: My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. Lots of online articles about changing the license key for an existing installation. You would copy your backup image to the other computer and then change its license key to a legitimately purchased one. https://www.lifewire.com/how-do-i-ch...ct-key-2624930 Just in case, make sure you save a backup image of your Windows 10 setup should you decide to move back to it. Thank you for that info. It's the "legitimately purchased one" I really need more info on. How can I directly ask MS this question? Will they sell me one? You buy the key-only products from resellers, like those at Amazon or eBay. I'd probably use eBay due to their buyer guarantee but after researching the sellers and their histories. As others have warned, make DAMN SURE you can get the drivers for your hardware (motherboard, video card, printer, etc) BEFORE you switch to an old OS. Many pre-builts are designed for a minimum version of the OS. They don't provide drivers for older OS versions, especially for unsupported older OS versions. Take an inventory of all your hardware. Then start hunting around for were to find drivers for all that hardware whether it be internal or external to the computer's case. |
#25
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Buying Windows 7
In message , VanguardLH
writes: [] I need stronger coffee, or less interruptions. Fewer. (-: -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Her [Valerie Singleton's] main job on /Blue Peter/ was to stop unpredictable creatres running amok. And that was just John Noakes. - Alison Pearson, RT 2014/9/6-12 |
#26
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Buying Windows 7
On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 20:31:16 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , VanguardLH writes: [] I need stronger coffee, or less interruptions. Fewer. (-: Took the word of my fingers. g |
#27
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Buying Windows 7
On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 14:17:31 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: VanguardLH wrote: The product key shown on a sticker on the case is for a volume image of the OS that gets copied onto thousands of computers by the OEM'er. They don't validate every computer they manufacture. They copy an image (fixed) onto each computer. They get to use the volume license. You do not, so the product key shown on the sticker may not be valid for use by you. Use something like Magic Jellybean or Belarc Advisor to get the Windows 7 license key out of that instance of an install. That's the one you get to reuse. My Dell laptop was the other way around. The Windows key on the sticker was my unique key. Belarc reported the generic Dell key. Oops, yep, the other way around. The image is the same that gets puts on thousands of computers so it has the pre-validated volume key. The stickers get printed with different keys on them. The sticker won't match the key in the image. I just thought I had an oddball PC here. -- Char Jackson |
#28
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
On 7/7/2018 4:57 AM, slate_leeper wrote:
On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 15:56:16 +0200, Heirloom wrote: slate_leeper wrote: On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 18:36:00 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: I'm fed up with Windows 10 on a machine I bought. I want Win7! I want Win7! Me too! My Win-7 was purchased as an OEM installation CD from Amazon. I bought it legally, and have the CD. I installed it on my new (then) ASUS and it works just fine. Win-10 on my new Dell is a disaster. I would love to install my much-customized Win-7 on it via restoring a disk image from the ASUS. However I am sure that will result in an "unlicensed" installation. Is there any way I can license it? I would be happy to pay MS for another license for the Dell. I have no idea what I'm doin', so wait for one of the experts to weigh in on this before you do anything. There are two issues here. What can you do? What is legal/ethical? I'll address only the first. What I'd do is install win7 from the digital river win7 generic install disk. That's by far the least stressful. I haven't looked for one lately, but they are likely available somewhere, but malware is always a risk. If you don't have access to a working win7 install disk... Here's what I'd try. If you have hundreds of gigabytes of stuff (movies/music/databases/etc) on C:, this will take a lot of offline storage. You can temporarily move that stuff to offline storage, but you risk screwing up anything you touch...stuff happens. Backup your win10 system with macrium. I use the menu option to "create an image of the partitions required to backup and restore windows. If you have other partitions, don't include them. Just create the partitions and copy the data when everything else is done. Save all your win10 drivers with DoubleDriver. Save all this elsewhere. On the win10 system, go into device manager and write down all the vendor and device numbers for your display and lan drivers. Wouldn't hurt to do the same for other non-standard stuff like card readers and bluetooth and and and. Search the web for those vendor/device numbers to see what win7 drivers are available and download them. The most critical is the lan driver. You can't easily install stuff if the lan ain't workin'. I assume that the display will work in degraded mode. If not, you're screwed. DISCONNECT ALL YOUR NETWORK CABLES BOTH COMPUTERS!!! Backup/image your win7 system with macrium. Put a new drive in your win7 system. Put the original win7 drive somewhere where you can't accidentally grab it. Macrium restore the win7 image you just made to the new drive. Boot the system and sysprep the win7 system. Backup the sysprepped win7 using the macrium rescue media. Save the backup elsewhere. Do not allow it to reboot. Remove the hard drive from your win10 system and save it somewhere you can't accidentally grab it. Take the drive out of the win7 system and put it into the win10 system. At this point, you'll have the two original drives from win7 and win10 in a safe place so you can't mess them up. Boot the original win10 system with the sysprepped win7 hard drive. It will go through the install menus and hopefully boot. That should give you a working win7 system with some activation grace period. Mine usually says 3 days, but it also seems to depend on the number of times you reboot it. I've had it lock up/expire in less than a day if I rebooted a lot. You have the grace period to look for drivers and decide if it will work for you. First place I'd look for missing drivers is the set you downloaded earlier when you searched for drivers by ven/dev numbers. Then try the DoubleDriver backup you made from win10. Try vendor sites. Try win7 update. I'd avoid any web site that wants to install a program to assist you in keeping your drivers up to date. Stated another way, never trust any site that insists you install anything before you get the driver. ....AKA almost all of them. Watch the links that push buttons call. Just cuz the box says "download" doesn't mean that it's downloading an actual driver. There are far more shady driver sites than trustworthy ones. Note that any application that required a license key will not work. Sometimes, you can re-enter the license key. Sometimes you'd have to reinstall the app. The app may or may not reinstall depending on whether they kept records of your original install. In extreme cases, your original win7 machine might have software invalidated if you move it. Use DoubleDriver to backup all your drivers at regular intervals. You never know when the grace period will expire and you lose everything. Keep a meticulous log of all the experiments. ARCHIVE THE SYSPREPPED WIN7 BACKUP. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT MIGHT COME IN HANDY. If you make your macrium recovery disk on a flash drive, you can even archive the sysprep to that drive. At some point, you're gonna have to decide if win7 works for you on that computer. If not, you're done. DO NOT TRY TO ACTIVATE THE NEW SYSTEM WITH YOUR OLD KEY. It may or may not work. It may or may not invalidate your original system. If you want to keep it, you move into legal territory. There are easy/reliable ways to activate your win7 system. Some have been mentioned already in this thread. That's your call. If you purchase a win7 key, there's no way to tell whether it will activate your particular installation. No way to tell if it will activate any version installed from media obtained elsewhere. No way to tell if it's a legal/compliant key that MS won't invalidate in the future. I've tried to accurately describe what I've done in the past. My memory ain't what it used to be. I may have made a mistake. There are a lot of moving parts. I've tried to describe a sequence that has low risk of wrecking either or both systems. You still have both the original hard drives. If you try to skip steps, or do it without a third hard drive, you risk bricking everything. Again, wait for the experts to comment before you mess things up. Are we having fun yet? -dan z- Have you tried contacting Dell? Dell support has been no help on this. Their SupportAssist system won't run because it is in the Program Files directory AND they asked me to update it (which of course didn't work except to make it no longer work at all.) Besides, their support is on the Win-10 that came with it, not the Win-7 I want to put on it. -dan z- |
#29
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
mike wrote:
What I'd do is install win7 from the digital river win7 generic install disk. That's by far the least stressful. I haven't looked for one lately, but they are likely available somewhere, but malware is always a risk. DigitalRiver as a source, dried up several years ago. Heidoc (URL Generator) generates a Windows 7 URL so you can fetch the file from TechBench. Microsoft only allows people with Retail license keys, to download a Win7 ISO. Using the Heidoc facility, it will give you a URL valid for 24 hours, and the download site is actually Microsoft. At the current time, the Heidoc developer is running in "hobbled" mode. Microsoft has thrown up a road block, and the "rate" that URLs can be generated is now strictly limited. It means, if using the Heidoc tool today, you may have to wait a bit for it to work out a URL. In the past, it worked instantly. The Heidoc tool is tailor made for the Dell or HP users of the world (the ones where the COA isn't worth anything for this purpose of downloading media). Since Heidoc doesn't store the file, and the file comes from Microsoft, it should be good to go. Paul |
#30
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Buying Windows 7 - related question
On 7/8/2018 7:29 PM, KenW wrote:
If Dell does not have Windows 7 drivers for your hardware, you are stuck. KenW That's pessimistic. Hardware vendor drivers sometimes exist. |
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