I have an HP desktop running windows vista that will soon be passed on to me. If I buy an "Upgrade" version of windows 7, is there a way to completely and totally wipe out the hard drive and upgrade, or would I have to buy the more expensive "full install" version of 7?
View 9 RepliesI would like to completely wipe the hard drive of my Lenovo Thinkpad as the Best Buy geek squad really messed things up. I need to back up all of my data first and was wondering if there was any free options online? I have a 4GB jump drive I can use as well.As for wiping the laptops hard drive, what is the best way? Keep in mind that I want to have it completely restored to factory state. I don't want to do a simple reformat through a Windows 7 install
View 25 Replies View RelatedI have a Acer Aspire Laptop that was running Windows 7. The hard drive had totally crashed so I ordered one from Newegg. It came in and I installed the Western Digital Hard Drive. here was no problem in installing the hard drive. After installing I checked the Bios and the drive was recognized.I had ordered from Acer a set of Recovery CDs which I used today to recover Windows. All went well and I had the system up and running. There were a 109 Windows updates that I started. Went in the other room and came back in about a half an hour and the laptop was dead. I went into Bios and no drive was recognized.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am upgrading my OS from XP to Windows 7, but I am having problems cleaning my hard drive so I have 16GB of free space. My D drive is not NFTS formatted so I can not install on it. How can I safely wipe the C drive so I can complete my upgrade.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a co-worker that brought in his Acer notebook. It is running Windows 7 loads but only will show the background. Nothing else will show. When trying to do a repair it locks up the repair every time. Does the same thing if I try to install Windows again.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI need to wipe my hard drive and reload Windows 7, Toshiba Satellite C655-S5049 I Dont have the Recovery dvd I made when it was first got
View 1 Replies View RelatedIf you overwrite a file and disable windows shadow copy (system restore) service, is there anyway to recover the overwrited files? I've heard of people recovering data from wiped hard drive disks. I'm need to know because I accidentally erased a text file that had all of my passwords stored on it...
View 3 Replies View RelatedI want to leave my Hard Drive Like NEW
View 2 Replies View RelatedHow do I wipe out the hard drive and start over in Windows 7?
View 2 Replies View Relatedi have a lg xnote that i got given to me because they didnt know what to do with it. when i turn it on it comes up as "harddisk security" and "primary master" and asks for a password that i dont have. i just want to wipe it or something?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am trying to help a friend out with his Sony Vaio E Series Laptop. The computer had crashed and he tried to do a clean install of windows but it failed and nothing would respond. Even when you tired to do a clean install of windows again it just went to the light blue windows screen with the bird and nothing happened. So I used Dban to Wipe the hard drive clean and start over from scratch. After I wiped it I tried to reinstall windows and it says there are no signed device drivers found. So I checked the bios and it's not even registering the hard drive. I have been searching the boards everywhere to find a solution to this. The Bios does not allow for much change so I can not make sure it is set to a SATA connection and I have tried turning off the signed device option when starting up. Nothing is working.
Sony Vaio E Series
Model# VPCEB23FM
Intel Core I3
I recently purchased a Dell Xps 1340 laptop that came with windows 7 32 bit professional. After a few months, I needed to wipe the hard disk, and so I did. Before I did, I extracted my product key with a program that I downloaded off the internet. I got the following information:
Windows 7 Professional
Product Part No.: X15-37377
Installed from 'OEM' media.
Product ID: ******* match to CD Key data
CD Key: *********
Computer Name: ***-PC
Registered Owner: ***
Registered Organization:
Anyway, I had a RETAIL windows 7 professional disc, and I installed this onto my dell laptop. However, it keeps telling me that my product key is wrong when I try to activate. I have tried both 32bit and 64bit? is it because I'm using a RETAIL windows 7 disc? If I try a dell oem disc, will that work with my product key?
I need to know how to wipe/format the hard drive to be able to re-install Windows 7 as 32bit.
View 3 Replies View Relatedhow to wipe/format the hard drive to be able to re-install Windows 7 as 32bit.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a old laptop that I installed w7 on. I was getting slow, so I wanted to get it so empty as possible. I have backed up all my files. Now I want everything to go, and start with a virgin windows 7.
When I installed win 7 it saved all my files to windows old (as it should) and all programs are left int c:/programfiles/.
How can I get rid of everything? I tried clean in the diskpart command. But it says it cannot(because of having system files on it).
Dose anyone Know to Uninstall Windows 7 from a hard Drive Completely ??
View 14 Replies View RelatedI was wondering... If I move my video, music, my documents folders etc. from my boot drive (ie C drive) to say a storage drive (D Drive), is the data completely removed from the boot drive or is it still there waiting to be erased next time a new file is written to it?
View 5 Replies View RelatedHow I can delete everything off of my hard drive so I can reinstall windows 7?
Specs:
AMD Phenom II x2 550
MSI 870A-G55
MSI Hawk ATI HD 5770
Antec TP-550 550w PSU
WD Cavier Black 750GB
Lite-On DVD Burner
So let me explain my situation. I have a 15 month old laptop, with a dying hard drive. Quite frequently when it spins up, the hard drive makes a horrible buzzing/scraping noise. I decided I will invest the money and replace it for the $100 and get a faster one (7200 rpm).
Here's the catch. I have an upgrade disk on order, and only an OEM backup disk (Vista) to reformat.
Whats the best way to replace the hard disk and use an upgrade media to use 7 on my computer?
My PC's Windows Experience index rating is currently at 5.9 due to my HDD. It's a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB. Which HDD should I look at to get more performance out of the rig? All the other fields are in the 7.0 to 7.6 range.
View 6 Replies View Relatedi have a retail upgrade version of windows 7 professional x86 am i able to format the hard drive using the disk...i dont want to use it to install windows 7
View 4 Replies View RelatedI would like to install Win 7 to a new Hard Drive. I have the Win7 Upgrade CD. I have XP running on an old HD that came with the original PC. how I can do this?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI did an image backup to move my programs from one hard drive to another, this worked fine. But when i re-sized the partition to give myself extra room in storage, programs stopped working from the ati graphics software to google chrome,etc. also i got the message that my system is low on RAM.
View 9 Replies View RelatedMy old hard drive sounds like it is about to die. So I am wondering, once I install my new HD (format and install windows) will it be possible to hook up my old HD and transfer the files from it to the new HD? I am using Windows 7 and both drives would be SATA.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI currently have Win 7 Home 32 bit installed. I will be upgrading my system and using a new Sata hard drive.I would like to install my Win 7 retail upgrade disk [ the 64 bit version ] on the new drive.Can I do this? If so what would be the easiest way to retain all information from my current 32 bit drive?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have an HP s5-1200z computer with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit. I have been reading and trying different things for the last three days trying to upgrade my hard drive. The computer came with a 500GB and I want to use my 1TB instead. The first thing that I did was create a system image and a system repair disc. I then restarted my computer and booted from the system repair disc. I selected my keyboard setup and then received an error stating �This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows�I can not figure out why I am getting this error message. Many post say that it is because 32 bit vs 64 bit. My computer is 64 bit and the repair disc that I made is 64 bit as well. With no luck on upgrading my hdd I decided to take a different approach. I then cloned my 500GB to my 1TB using Easeus Partition Master Home Edition. Everything seems to be on the 1TB HDD it stated it was successful. I then removed the source hdd and installed the 1TB destination hdd, I turned the computer on and received an error "bootmgr is missing press ctrl+alt+delete to reboot." I also spent many more hours researching this problem, I can not find a solution. Many articles say boot from system repair disc and click repair your computer" when I try to do that I still continue to receive the error "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows"I have read that having more than one hdd connected at once can cause boot errors. But I do not believe this is the case because my computer can only hold one hdd.I also downloaded the Windows Home Premium x64 from mydigitallife to try and repair my pc from there only to receive the same error.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a bit of a strange question about installing the Windows 7 upgrade. I'll try to keep it as simple as I can. Firstly
1: I currently have Windows XP SP3 Home Edition installed (and activated) on my 160GB WD Caviar Blue hard drive, which has 8MB cache. It's getting a bit full now.
2. This hard drive is one of the few remnants of a Dell machine I bought a few years ago.
Surprisingly, the restore disk still works and activates, even though I've changed the motherboard and a number of other things over the years. My last reinstall was about a year ago, and I had no problems reactivating whatsoever - I didn't even need to phone Microsoft.
However I doubt it'll install and activate on a new hard drive - particularly as I've also changed the DVD drive since my last activation (as the old one broke), literally the only things remaining from the old system would be the RAM and the processor.
2: I have purchased a 500GB WD Caviar Blue with 16MB Cache
3: I intend to buy Windows 7 Pro Upgrade from TheUltimateSteal for £30. I'm a student, but will be graduating soon, so it seems sensible to take advantage of this offer while I can.
4. Clearly I can install Windows 7 in the normal way onto my current drive and use the 500GB drive for backing up my files, which I'll do if that's the only option.
5. However, if I did that I would not be taking full advantage of the extra cache of the new drive. It would be nice if I could use that for my primary installation to speed things up a bit.
So here's my question:
If I start the upgrade process having booted from the 160GB drive, but during installation select my 500GB drive as the target for the installation, will Windows 7 install and activate correctly? Will it recognise the pre-existing installation, even though it was on a different drive?
If not, then:
If I install my Dell restore disk on the new drive, and don't activate Windows (which presumably I won't be able to), and then run the Windows 7 upgrade on THAT drive, will Windows 7 install and activate correctly?
Basically, is there a legitimate way of installing a Windows 7 Upgrade onto the 500GB drive, on the basis of there currently being a valid XP installation on the 160GB drive?
I have no intention of continuing to use XP after the upgrade, if I am able to install and activate Windows 7 to the new drive, then this will serve only as a backup for my files.
Has anybody tried something similar and succeeded/failed?
I've already read the tutorials on here about doing a clean install of Windows 7. I'd like to avoid dodgy workarounds, as I'd rather not run into problems further down the line when it comes to updates and that sort of thing.
So I'm building a new computer completely from scratch, save for the hard drive, which I'm recycling from my old system. The hard drive currently has Windows XP installed.
My question is, can I upgrade the system with this? [URL]
Also, I plan to eventually buy a new hard drive. This presents a dilemma, because at the moment I can only afford the OEM or Upgrade versions of Windows 7. I read an article on PC World that claims there is a way to do a clean installation of Windows 7 using an Upgrade license. Here's the article: [URL]
Anyways, is that method still valid? Have any of you guys heard of it before?
I'm considering buying the Upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium, but I do not want to make the purchase only to realize later that I can not use it.
Really, I'm just looking for a solution. The only thing keeping me from buying Windows 7 OEM is the installation limits (can only install on one computer per license). When I get my new hard drive, I'd like to be able to use whatever version of Windows 7 that I own on it.
1. My sister has a Dell Dimension 5100 desktop computer with Windows XP from the factory. Can I put the Windows 7 UPGRADE version on a second hard drive in her machine? Is this OK or do I need the 'FULL' version?
2. Is this automatically going to create two options when booting the machine, giving her the options to boot either into XP or W7?
I have a dell inspirion 1505. I just upgraded my Ram and my hard drive. My computer came with a 80GB hard drive, but when i tried to replace it with a new 500GB hard drive my computer still only recognizes it as a 80GB. During the windows 7 upgrade where i would normally be able to clear my new hard drive and specify my new drives it still only showed 80 GB.
i have talked to dell twice now and i get conflicting answers each time. The first person said that my computer would only support 120GB and the second said it would only support 100GB. I have a hard time believing this because my computer came with a SATA harddrive, which shouldnt limit me.. At least i thought.
I want to format and 0 write and wipe the entire hard drive in an Asus EEEPC with no system disc and re-install windows 7 home premium. The windows registration number is on the back of the computer.
Did not come with a windows disc or recovery disc from the factory, IE windows 7 home pro was pre-installed.
I created a system recover boot disc/CD. This machine has no CD/DVD drive, but I do have a USB CD/DVD drive.
If I format and write the drive, but leave the partitions will I be able to re-install this version of windows that came with the machine ??