Hello all,
my nephew is the owner of a refurbished laptop and is experiencing difficulties which I think would be solved by a clean reinstall of the operating system.
I’m still a bit of a noob with regard to this kind of thing and have a few questions before I undertake this task on his behalf.
My questions are as follows:
1. The COA Sticker says “Windows 7 Pro Refurb PC Citizenship”. I need to download a Windows .iso to reinstall the operating system, how do I determine which version to use (32 bit vs 64 bit)? The computer hangs on windows startup so I can’t review any info in control panel or my computer.
2. Can I download the iso I need from the following website? (I successfully reinstalled my own Win 7 Home 64 bit from here)
http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techno…
3. The authentication key printed on the COA label looks different to the one on “normal” windows COAs, the numbers are not split into groups of 5 as on my home version e.g.”XXXXX-XXXXX…etc.” being 5-5-5-5-5 but in the following format: 5-3-3-3 Do I need to worry about this?
I hope someone can help me out, my nephew is quite adventurous on his laptop (he’s 11) which is to be encouraged, but it also means he can occasionally screw things up nicely and I’ll like to be able to set him right again when that happens.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Sounds like a hacked Version of Windows with a fake COA sticker made to look like a real one.
Before you start you might like to runa copy of Magic Jellybean. If this comes up with a key in five groups of five number then are probably good to go. If it comes up with anything else then you almost certainly have a pirated version of Windows 7
http://www.magicaljellybean.com/key…
The legaility of the downloads from Ditial River may be debatable but the are safe to use. I have one myself. But without a genuine licence key they are useless.
As to whether you need the 32 bit version or the 64 bit version is dependant on the hardware of the laptop. You can find out what you have now from Computer>properties. Assuming to manage to extract a valid key using Magic Jellybean you need to install the same version.
Stuart
message edited by StuartS