Replacing hard drive

[open]

My Hard drive has broken on my netbook.

Want to replace it - physically replacing isn't a problem. But what do I do about re installing windows 7? I have no CD drive. If I replace it will I have to buy Win & again or what.

Please help thanks!
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"Calamity - A more than commonly plain & unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering."

[s]Baotian BT49qt-9 --> Honda CG125 (4 speed) '51 plate ----- 03/11/2012 Mod 2 PASSED! --> Cb500s[/s] Revoked

[Phil.]

I expect you will have the option to re-install using a bootable USB drive.

Firstly go in to your bios settings and make sure USB is set as a primary boot option.

Then you will need to get windows 7 installed on a USB stick.

Microsoft provide a tool to do this for you;

https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

[t121anf]

ISOs are available from here

https://www.w7forums.com/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads-t12325.html

Providing you have your key you don't need to buy again, if you don't have it and don't want to pay you can use such programs as win loader.

there was a thread in here not long ago with other activation tools.

[prawny1]

How has your drive broken, does it still power up etc?

If you can't boot from it or run windows repair, try cloning it to another drive then running the repair facility.

You will have to do an advanced repair using the cmd to fix mbr etc but will be more likely to succeed on a healthy drive.

I had to do the same on a laptop drive on a sony for my sister in law, she wanted to try save all her pictures and the recovery partition and stuff after the drive started throwing up bad sectors and wouldn't boot or repair.

It did bsod a couple of times since when trying to access corrupt data cloned over but it stabilised after a few check disk runs, I was expecting to be able to access the cloned drive to save the data then wipe everything fresh but she has been using it daily for months now.
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hellkat wrote:

Some people are only alive cos its against the law to kill them.

[Scotsman37]

Like others have stated you can either load it from a USB Data stick drive that had been made bootable, and once done go into your BIOS and tell your system to look at your USB device 1st to find the bootable Windows device.

Or you can buy an external CD/DVD drive for £15 on Ebay or so and use a bootable Windows Disk that matches your version of Windows allowing you to use the Windows COA label found underneath your netbook which load the correct software. You must keep in mind that you will need download the drivers from manufacturer's website to access the special features your netbook i.e. chipset drivers, etc, and for your webcam, etc.

If your Hard drive may or may not be dead and one way of checking it is use an external hard drive casing for laptop hard drives which comes with USB connection cables from Ebay for about £5. This will allow to possibly access your hard drive otherwise you may need to load specific software that allows you to recover data from a damaged hard drive.

[CaNsA]

[prawny1]

Scotsman You just reminded me that is what I had to do with the sister in laws, I fitted it in an external caddy then copied each partition to the new one at a time because it kept erroring when I tried to copy the whole drive at once THEN ran the repairs from the recovery environments cmd prompt.
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hellkat wrote:

Some people are only alive cos its against the law to kill them.

[open]

When it boots it asks to insert bootable media - so I think its pretty gone. Not to bothered about the stuff on it (except some music - but everything else wasn't to important) so not really bother about repairing it. Just want to replace it and install windows.

I think the main thing being I dont have the windows serial key any more. So can someone elaborate on how to activate an ISO of windows 7?
____________________
"Calamity - A more than commonly plain & unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering."

[s]Baotian BT49qt-9 --> Honda CG125 (4 speed) '51 plate ----- 03/11/2012 Mod 2 PASSED! --> Cb500s[/s] Revoked

[P.addy]

[SQL]

https://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/24901-Windows-Loader-Current-release-information

Hit install and forget about it

[prawny1]