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I was going through my usual day at work with my laptop,when it crashed,corrupted the drive,and rendered it useless,unless I reformat the drive itself.

But,I somehow lost the disc and the product key that I used to install Win7 to that laptop(I hated WinXp on the laptop,so I switched to 7)and now I'm writing this question on a workmate's computer.

How do I re-install Win7?

I don't want to waste money again just for a new disc.

And also,I eventually gave up,and resorting to a site called GetIntoPc.com,downloading one of their untouched isos,and realized,I have no idea of installing this without a product key.

Pls. tell me a solution,and if this absolutely makes no sense.

Daniel B
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Ryekseu
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2 Answers2

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  1. Take out laptop's HDD and put it in a USB enclosure so you can access it from another PC. Hopefully the drive's partition table and file table are still intact to allow access to the relevant files.

  2. Use ProduKey, load the Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE registry hive from the HDD and retrieve your key.

  3. Download the appropriate version of Windows 7 and reinstall. If you already have an ISO be very sure it is untouched (compare with known MD5/SHA1 hashes) and free from malware.

Community
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Karan
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  • After I posted this and later saw this comment,I hurried to do this and this is what happened during the steps:1.A big nope.After I placed it in a USB enclosure,I checked if it's still accessible,but nope.It somehow corrupted a part of the partition and file table and that part was unluckily the entire tables. – Ryekseu Jun 13 '15 at 11:06
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    That's unfortunate. You can try data recovery software to retrieve at least the file I mentioned, but if you aren't successful you're most likely out of luck. This is why you should note down important information such as product keys and keep them safe and secure. BTW, where did you purchase Win7 from? – Karan Jun 13 '15 at 11:10
  • I'm going to try recovering the data after this comment,so I might not be able to reply so quickly. To answer your question @karan, I bought Windows7 from my nearest software store.I didn't remember the name of it,and before I bought their stock Win7,I made them make sure that it had no rootkits or spyware,and I also made them compare the MD5 hash with the ones at the official Microsoft website. – Ryekseu Jun 13 '15 at 11:14
  • Back from data-recovering with all the tools I can get my shareware-hands on,and all hope is lost.I'm going back to GetIntoPc.com,which I still dont have the key for. – Ryekseu Jun 13 '15 at 11:34
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If you have a totally solid proof of purchase, you might be able to convince Microsoft to give you a new key. Other than that, it’s simply bad luck. You should acquire a new key/license ASAP because Windows 7 consumer sales have stopped.

Daniel B
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