Or I suppose we could leave the laptop unconnected to the Internet and just use it when he needs access to his documents – if Windows will allow using Office without activation. ![]() On the one hand, the machine was updated through the January 2018 rollup, so I suppose I could just uninstall that update to roll back to December 2017 and then join Group W, I guess. I do have a defunct hp laptop with a Windows 7 product key sticker, but it’s Home Premium rather than Ultimate, and I understand that the keys are specific to a Windows version. I’ve read that you can activate Windows by phone after explaining that all you’ve done is replace the hard drive, but I don’t have a COA product key to give them. Is there any difference between using the clone and restoring the image that I made? In other words, either way Windows is going to ask for an activation key, is that right? (The old disk is a Seagate with 500 GB and the new disk is a 750GB WD.) So is there a way for me to activate Windows after I install the new hard drive? There’s also no “recovery drive” built in that you can use to make recovery disks as there is on many consumer PCs. The COA sticker on the bottom of the laptop is for Vista, and of course there was no Windows 7 Ultimate Product Key included when I bought it, much less any installation disks. ![]() I haven’t tried switching out the hard drives yet, but I’m anticipating one problem. I’m retired, so I have a lot more time than money. As it is, the laptop is useless anyway, so I might as well try it. Now, though, I’ve read some documentation and watched some YouTube videos, and I think it’s something I could do. I’m not a techie and have never replaced a hard drive, so I didn’t do anything with it right then, and other things in life took priority. My husband started using a Chromebook and stopped using this laptop. A little while later I bought a new WD HDD and used it to clone the hard drive with Macrium Reflect. Right away I copied the documents and pictures to an external hard drive (there wasn’t a lot of data, less than 1GB) and then made an image with Macrium Reflect (free). I kept it updated with Group A-style Windows Updates.Īt the beginning of March of this year the system suddenly started giving a message that the hard drive was failing. ![]() It was in great shape and worked perfectly for my husband’s general needs for browsing, email, and word processing. I think maybe it had previously been used by a business and the computer shop re-worked it for consumer use. It came with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1, an Intel i5 processor (Arrandale), 4 GB of RAM, and MS Office 2013. If I clone a failing hard disk using Macrium Reflect and install the new clone in the laptop, will it require a product key for Windows Activation? If so, what can I do if I don’t have a product key? Here’s the full story.Ī few years ago I bought an old used Dell Latitude E6410 from a third-party vendor on Amazon for a nice low price.
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