Upgrading from Vista

spkeller · 26 Mar 2011

Hi, I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 that came with Vista. I bought an upgrade to Windows 7 pro, installed it and it worked - mostly. There are a few things that seem to behave differently from my desktop machine that was purchased with Win 7 pro. As time went on, things just got worse - IE 8 barely works at all, Itunes and WMP don't always work smoothly, even connecting to my wireless network can be a chore at times. I've compared settings and both look to be set the same. I finally got tired of fighting the 'bad' laptop installation, and I started to re-install windows 7 from the upgrade dvd. Now at the end of the process, it's asking me for the product key. I tried the Vista key and that didn't work. The COA from the Win7 disc does not have a product key. (It looks legit as compared to the images and descriptions on the MSFT site). Does anyone have any ideas? (I'd rather not do a complete wipe and reinstall if I can avoid it).

Thanks.

Rascal · 26 Mar 2011

Where did you get the Windows 7 Upgrade disc from.

alphanumeric · 26 Mar 2011

Things don't always work out when doing an upgrade. I've seen it happen countless times. A clean install is the way to go, which can be done even with an upgrade version. Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version
You should have had to enter a product code the first time around too, so what did you enter then? Are you looking at the DVD for the product code or the COA sticker that should have been included with the DVD. Its the sticker you want.

Bare Foot Kid · 26 Mar 2011

Hello spkeller, welcome to Seven Forums!

You will have better success if you completely wipe the entire Hard Disk Drive and clean install Windows 7 and be sure to boot the Windows installer and not run the installer from within an already installed Windows.

All the installed programs/apps will have to be reinstalled so be sure to save the activation keys where applicable as they integrate themselves into the Windows registry and are not moveable from one Windows installation to another.

Have a thorough look through all the information presented below and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

After you have copied out or made back-ups of the data you need to save to external media, use Step One of this tutorial at the first link below to do a wipe (secure erase) to the entire Hard Disk Drive / Solid State Drive.

Then if you do not want to create the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #2 to create, format and mark Active a single 100GB partition to do the installation to.
If you do want to create the "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #3 to create, format and mark Active the System Reserved partition and then create and format the 100GB partition to do the installation to.

Either way, running the "clean all" then creating and formatting the partition(s) using diskpart will get you the best possible space to do a clean install of Windows 7 to; you can always extend the Windows partition to include the remaining unallocated space on the HDD / SSD or create additional Primary partitions or an Extended partition after the installation completes if you choose.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

DISKPART : At PC Startup

Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

gregrocker · 26 Mar 2011

You should have a Product Key that came with the Upgrade DVD on an insert in the packaging.

Where did you get the Win7 Upgrade? It's possible the key can be recovered.

spkeller · 26 Mar 2011

The upgrade came from JourneyEd.com - It's an Academic Software discount website. ( My daughter goes to Marquette University - It's her laptop). She's going to contact them also, but based on the info I've received so far, it sounds like we should just start from scratch. I'll update this thread as I move forward with this project.
Thanks.

Bare Foot Kid · 26 Mar 2011

spkeller said:

The upgrade came from JourneyEd.com - It's an Academic Software discount website. ( My daughter goes to Marquette University - It's her laptop). She's going to contact them also, but based on the info I've received so far, it sounds like we should just start from scratch. I'll update this thread as I move forward with this project.
Thanks.

Hello again.

Be sure to post back here if you need further help and to keep us posted.

gregrocker · 26 Mar 2011

The MS student discount fulfiller Digital River sent the Product Key in an email then required users to download the ISO to burn their own DVD - in fact at first they failed to provide an ISO until this was corrected.

Did your supplier do anything like this? If so the Key might be in a confirmation email, on the receipt or sales page.

spkeller · 26 Mar 2011

My daughter is checking her email archives, and we also contacted the vendor, I hope we'll hear something by Monday. stay tuned...

DocBrown · 26 Mar 2011

Did you complete the reinstall when the key code did not work or did you abort it & therefore have your original upgrade install running but with problems? If the original upgrade install, you may be able to find your key code with SIW | System Information for Windows by Gabriel Topala or with Magical Jelly Bean