UKH

A couple of years ago I got help here installing Linux onto an old laptop.  Sadly, my wife (who is the main user) hates it and is keen to go back to windows.  So I'd like to have a shot at putting a clean installation of windows on it to see if it's usable - it might be that the specs are just too old, but I think it'll be able to manage to run MS office and a browser, which is all that she really needs.  Planning to put Win7 on and then immediately upgrade to 10, as Win7 support is all but over now.

I have the original Win7 disk with the product key, supplied with the laptop.  It doesn't have a DVD drive so I'm trying to create a bootable USB drive.  Rather than mess around with the disk I've just tried to download the Win7 ISO file from Microsoft, but when I put my product key in it says 'The product key you've entered appears to be for software which was pre-installed by the device manufacturer. Please contact the device manufacturer for software recovery options.'

 Do I really have to go back to Dell to ask them for a new copy of Windows for a laptop they sold me in 2009??  As far as I'm concerned, this is my copy of Windows, purchased for this exact machine, and I ought to have the right to re-install it!  I can still create the USB from the disk, but I imagine that when I try to register it I'll get the same problem.

Ideas?  I know I can buy dodgy keys from eBay - is that actually the simplest way forward?  Will the upgrade to Win10 work with those keys?

I *think* W10 is no longer a free upgrade from W7.  So you may as well buy the W10 licence and install it directly.

Apparently there are still some (slightly back-door) routes to get the upgrade, but they're likely to be pulled pretty soon.

I'm not too keen on spending £120 for a new copy of Win10 for an ancient laptop - if I really can't get it back on this machine then I'll flog it as a still-functional Linux machine and buy a new laptop that's already running Win10.  I think there's a non-zero chance that I'll find the current laptop can't handle Win10 (it's quite an old processor) so if it's not a free (or at least very cheap) experiment I shan't bother!

I re-installed Win 10 Pro recently and it activated straight away using my old Win 7 Pro OEM license.

Not really the answer you may what, but what does she dislike about Linux? There are other distros (more recent ones) which may fix her dislike. And for someone who doesn't use a computer much using Google docs helps get past other issues!

Other than that, the eBay keys are super cheap and I've never had an issue... But on an old laptop its ability to run it may be questionable!

Get a legit win10 key from Kinguin for about £20. You should be able to find a minimum spec for win10 on the web somewhere.

What about win 10s?

Seems to need marginal specs. 

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/windows-10-cloud-release-date-news-and-ru...

I put W10 on an old (2010 Thinkpad L412) last week.  I put in an SSD at the same time.  It runs pretty well for day-to-day stuff.

I used the W10 install media. It didn't activate automatically from the BIOS/SLIC entry, which is how W7 was activated before, but activated just fine from the W7 COA sticker. This laptop had been upgraded to 10 when it was free and downgraded again though, so that might have created an entitlement on a server somewhere, but I'd be inclined to give it a bash anyway.

Thinking back... I'm pretty sure I have done one of these laptops before using the generic W7 install media, not the lenovo one. I think the SLIC activation worked, but I might have used some extra software to find/install some form of certificate???

Hope that helps.

Cheers, all.

She's keen to go back to Windows because she wants to run genuine MS Office - she's tried various free versions on Linux and none are as good.  She does a lot of presentation work, so finding that a powerpoint or word doc has re-arranged its formatting in the transition between LibreOffice and MS Office is not helpful!

The machine has an Athlon K325 dual processor and 4GB of RAM, so I think it ought to cope with full Win10 (and it looks like Win10s is only available to schools anyway).  I removed its HDD and replaced it with an SSD at the same time as I installed Linux; perhaps I should have tried Windows with the SSD first, but I figured that I may was well change everything all at once!

Jack - are you suggesting that if I install Win10 directly, it might well register with my original product key?  How do I get hold of the Win10 install media? 

Presumably, if that doesn't work, I can then have a go with an eBay key - given that I genuinely have already bought Windows for this machine I don't feel at all guilty about using one!  They seem to be available for less than £2..!

For the iso (and the media creation tool) try:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/15088/windows-10-create-installati...

I had to ring MS to get a code for an OEM licence. It sounds like you may have this problem. It's a bit tedious, but it did work.

ps. From a current thread:

https://www.howtogeek.com/266072/you-can-still-get-windows-10-for-free-with...

I installed win 10 on an old pc whixh theoretically met the specs, but the graphics didn't! 

There was a similar thread recently - started by the Lemming I believe. Plenty of pointers in there.

Check that your laptop has at least the basic spec to run Windows 10. It almost certainly does: I upgraded a ten year old Toshiba recently and it works fine. Forget your old windows 7 licence. Swap the harddrive for an ssd to vastly improve its performance.

Basically I'd suggest:

1. Get a new SSD. Ebuyer has 480GB kingston SSDs for less than £50 (https://www.ebuyer.com/790252-kingston-a400-480gb-ssd-ebuyer-com-sa400s37-4...). Note that that is a SATA drive, the drive you buy needs to match that used by the laptop.

2. Download a Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10). Never download windows from anywhere else.

3. Buy a Windows 10 licence from a reputable vendor like Kinguin (https://www.kinguin.net/category/22175/windows-10-home-oem-key). Ones on Ebay are dodgy.

Good luck

Have a look at this link - https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Dave

The cheapest and simplest solution is to buy a usb dvd drive off amazon, sub £20, and it’ll arrive tomorrow on Prime. Install via you win 7 DVD and just use it. Win 10 is pure bloatware and can be really frustratingly slow on older machines. I have some legacy machines similar spec to yours which run stuff in a lab. I tried 10 when support stopped for 7, and quickly went back to 7 and dual boot to Ubuntu. 

when I need to use PowerPoint in Ubuntu, I use the web version of Office 365 via a Chrome Browser. Have you tried this? It also gives you access to your Microsoft Exchange calendars etc.

Thanks again, all.

Looks like the laptop should be able to cope with Win10; I see several for sale on eBay with the same processor that are running it.  It seems there might be some driver issues for the graphics (Radeon 4225) but I can see fixes detailed so I'll cross that bridge if / when I get to it.  It already has a new 120GB SSD.

Have now created a USB Win10 installer.  How odd that MS won't let me download Win7 without a valid key, but will happily give me a copy of Win10 without checking!

I won't get a chance to try it till tonight.  I'll try to old Win7 product key first and see if that'll work.  If not, I don't mind paying £20 for a valid Win10 key.  I wonder, though, in what way are the eBay ones dodgy - are they illegal and one day I'll have problems because of that, or they just don't work at all?  I'm still ever so slightly annoyed at having to pay again for an OS I've already bought..!

I'm a bit nervous about continuing to run Win7 past it's end of support (which I understand is very soon).  It'll need to be internet connected so isn't that a serious virus risk in the coming years?

We have tried the online Office suite but it was as clunky as hell! I think it's because we have a fairly poor internet connection - we're a long long way from the only fibre cabinet in the village.

All done, and it's working perfectly. I used the link provided by several people above to download Win10 to a USB key, and when it asked for my product key I gave it my original Win7 key - it seems happy with that. Hurrah. 

For such an old CPU, it's smooth enough running Win10. Admittedly I'm not asking it to do very much! 

Thanks again for the help. Between resurrecting this laptop and fixing my apparently knackered TV (dodgy WiFi module causing it to crash, fixed by plugging into LAN and simply disconnecting the faulty WiFi module) I've saved myself quite a few pennies over the last couple of days! Very pleasing.