Windows 7 drive wiped, re-install no disk?

agrinnall

Why not just sell it without an operating system? You might find a buyer who wants to put Linux on a machine and would be more than happy to have an empty hard drive.

grumpycrab

skintpaul wrote: »

Check on back / base- may have the Windows sticker with a long auth code on.

yep - sell it as is with the 4x5 digit product key.

GunJack

worth more if it works out of the box

fuzzgun19

Ok, thanks for all the suggestions. I managed to download the Windows 7 file.

GunJack wrote: »

or, download imgburn to your vista pc and use that to burn the ISO you have downloaded to a dvd

http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/

WARNING - if you do this, as you go through the installation, MAKE SURE you do not install any of the additional toolbars, search engines etc., Imgburn is very good, but you don't want the other stuff.

I've tried downloading this, but keep getting error messages and it won't work.

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

If you've downloaded the iso you can use this tool to put the install on a USB stick and boot from that:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool

John

I would try this, but I don't have a USB stick with a large enough capacity.

agrinnall wrote: »

Why not just sell it without an operating system? You might find a buyer who wants to put Linux on a machine and would be more than happy to have an empty hard drive.

I was thinking I may get a bit more if it was 'ready to use'.

I do have a Nero program, and did try 'burn data disk', but when I tried to boot the laptop from the disk, nothing happened and I got the error loop.

GunJack

fuzzgun - I've just been to the filehippo imgburn page and it works fine, click the download latest version big green box on the right of the page.

Download & install, bearing in mind the warning I gave you earlier. When you run the program, you want the first option shown, Burn Image to Disk. Click it, and select the Windows 7 .ISO file you downloaded

You need a blank DVD, not CD-ROM. Also, you're not burning a data file, you are burning an .ISO image file. The two are not the same. As far as I remember, Nero doesn't burn .ISO images.

bsod

It's not just a data disc, it's an iso image, there are many ways to burn it properly

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?complete=0#complete=0&q=burn+dvd+image+nero

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?complete=0#complete=0&q=burn+dvd+image

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?complete=0#complete=0&q=burn+iso+image

fuzzgun19

I'm using DVD+RW disk. I've re-started the PC, and am now trying Imgburn again, so far it's formatting the disk.

fuzzgun19

It's now burned and verified. When I put the disk into the laptop, do I need to do anything, or will it just run?

GunJack

fuzzgun19 wrote: »

It's now burned and verified. When I put the disk into the laptop, do I need to do anything, or will it just run?

it will run, provided you have set the laptop to boot from the dvd drive before the hdd....insert dvd into lappy, and on power-on, hit the key to select boot device (ths may be F2, F12, F10, Esc or Del, depending on the machine. It will normally tell you on the power-on splash screen )

fuzzgun19

It has worked, although it did not ask me for the product key.

Thanks to all for the advice and helping me out