Activating Windows7 on old laptop and other questions?

Belenus

I am attempting to improve the performance of a friend's old laptop which runs so slowly that it is more or less impossible to use. She only uses it for occasional email and printing out tickets etc. so she doesn't want to spend several hundred pounds on a new laptop.

Dell Inspiron 1525 Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4200 @ 2.00GHz 2.00gb (2 x 1gb)

Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit

I tried cleaning it up with ccleaner etc with no noticeable improvement. It runs so slowly that doing anything meaningful is very difficult as it might take 10 minutes to react.

I therefore fitted a replacement 320gb disk that I have no use for and loaded a fresh installation of Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. I have also ordered her 2 x 2gb (£10 used on eBay) memory which should help. It is now running reasonably well.

The product key on the laptop base has been smudged so I cannot read two of the characters. I have tried various different guesses none of which has worked so far. 36 x 36 = 1,296 which is a lot of possible permutations to try.

This means I cannot activate Windows7.

Will that mean it will stop working after 28 days? Is it worth trying one of the 'How To Activate Windows 7 without a Product Key' options on google or is it possible to email or phone Microsoft?

Can I get the product key from the original disc and, if yes, then how?

When I upgrade it to 4gb is it worth installing Windows10 or should it stay with Windows7?

Can I install Windows10 for free with a non activated version of Windows7?

Thanks

Peter999_2

Hi Belenus,  the cheapest and easiest way would be to put the old disk back in the laptop and download Jellybean product key finder.    This will give you the product key that came with the laptop and you can use that product key on the new hard drive.

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Neil_Jones

Peter999_2 said:

Hi Belenus,  the cheapest and easiest way would be to put the old disk back in the laptop and download Jellybean product key finder.    This will give you the product key that came with the laptop and you can use that product key on the new hard drive.

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Unless the key is the Dell volume licence key, and then it will not activate.  The system will tell you to phone and then go through "Change Product Key" which will require the key on the bottom of the unit.  Which you now don't have (all the Windows 7 keys eventually come off laptops, it wasn't an issue with Vista and is irrelevant with 8 and 10 for technical reasons I won't bore you with now.)

I believe it is possible to upgrade 10 via the "Free upgrade" route (never mind what the blurb says about it finishing years ago) with a non-activated  Windows, I'm sure I've done it before.  Might be worth a shot, you can always roll back.

Belenus

Peter999_2 said:

Hi Belenus,  the cheapest and easiest way would be to put the old disk back in the laptop and download Jellybean product key finder.    This will give you the product key that came with the laptop and you can use that product key on the new hard drive.

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Thanks Peter. Unfortunately that didn't work. It produced a key that bore no resemblance to the key on the base label and that didn't work.

Thanks anyway.

Belenus

Neil_Jones said:

Peter999_2 said:

Hi Belenus,  the cheapest and easiest way would be to put the old disk back in the laptop and download Jellybean product key finder.    This will give you the product key that came with the laptop and you can use that product key on the new hard drive.

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Unless the key is the Dell volume licence key, and then it will not activate.  The system will tell you to phone and then go through "Change Product Key" which will require the key on the bottom of the unit.  Which you now don't have (all the Windows 7 keys eventually come off laptops, it wasn't an issue with Vista and is irrelevant with 8 and 10 for technical reasons I won't bore you with now.)

I believe it is possible to upgrade 10 via the "Free upgrade" route (never mind what the blurb says about it finishing years ago) with a non-activated  Windows, I'm sure I've done it before.  Might be worth a shot, you can always roll back.

Thanks Neil. She bought this laptop some years ago from a local second hand computer shop so who knows what product key or activation method they used.

I'm going to wait until the new memory arrives and then try a Windows10 upgrade.

Can I do that on an empty disc as I have a few other spare 320gb discs?

debitcardmayhem

this any good https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000130711/how-to-locate-your-system-service-tag-using-command-prompt

Laz123

I have an Inspiron which I don't use because it's still much slower than my MSI. If you replace with the original hdd there's a few ways to speed it up https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/improve-and-speed-up-dell-laptop-pc.html Defraging, changing performance settings, running SFC, etc could be effective which would save all the hassle of trying to activate the new hdd.

Another alternative is to install Belarc Advisor which can find product keys.

Neil_Jones

Belenus said:

The product key on the laptop base has been smudged so I cannot read two of the characters. I have tried various different guesses none of which has worked so far. 36 x 36 = 1,296 which is a lot of possible permutations to try.

This means I cannot activate Windows7.

There are only certain characters that appear in Windows product keys, the numbers 2-9 (a 1 and a zero are not used) and the alphabet minus the vowels and the letters L, N, S and Z.  So that reduces your permutation count to "only" 576

Also an 8 looks like a B if you're not looking carefully due to the typeface they used for the product keys.  Also as a zero is not used if you happen to see an O it can only be the letter, not the number.

jamesd

If you don't get anywhere with recovering a key it's worth checking on ebay where genuine Windows 10 keys can be purchased from around £5, delivery by email within seconds typically. Less hassle so might be worth doing anyway just to save yourself aggravation.

It will be worth upgrading to Windows 10 and unusually, Wikipedia even has some tips in the article for things to tweak after doing it. Also worth investigating their observation that it's been tested and found to work with 6GB of RAM rather than the official 4GB maximum, but no data on whether 8GB works - likely to, though.

MyDefrag is my preferred disk defragmenter for spinning disks and after a few boots the system disk monthly choice normally produces a significant increase in boot times. Pointless for SSDs, just use the optimise built into Windows for them.

As long as it's using a spinning hard drive it's worth considering using the Windows ReadyBoost feature and a thumb drive. Up to 16 or maybe 32GB of thumb drive ideally with an A1 speed rating can be useful for this. A2 is more costly and the computer probably won't have the required support for it. With no A rating it's A0 and still likely to be of some use, but the A1 guarantees random access rates and that's handy for this use. Not really worth buying something new, though, if old and small is available. Nothing spectacular will happen and the USB sockets are only USB2 so that'll also limit the potential. ReadyBoost won't even be offered if Windows is installed on a solid state disk. It's present in Windows 7 and 10.

Not worth spending much money on a computer this old compared to a later used model but a little is decent enough.

Ant555

If you go to the activate windows section in the control panel then does it offer a screen that says 'show me other ways to activate' then an option  'use automated phone system' - you should get a screen with a really long code and an 0800 freephone number to call.

Run through the automated system where you type in the numbers on the phone and the automated system reads back a really long activation code that you type on the keyboard.

I had to do something similar recently with a new hard disk on a Windows 7 Pro machine and it activated just fine so I dont know how it recognises the lap top as I just used some old OS install disks but it did.

Belenus

Thanks everyone.

The memory arrived this morning so I fitted it and put the original disc with Windows7 activated back in. It was still running slowly so I decided to try Windows10. It was a slow and laborious upgrade over several hours but it all worked in the end.

The laptop is now working reasonably well with Windows10 so a decent result for a £10 expenditure. It handles simple tasks such as email, text and browsing the web just fine.

I'm assuming there will be no problem with activation as 10 was installed on an activated version of 7.

I will try some of the tweaks and suggestions above.

Thanks again.