Win 7 ultimate 64bit, can I use current OEM Key and reinstall

I believe that for Win 10 I would have to pay for it, this is an old laptop and I have the product key for vista, in the worst case I would rather go back to vista. Not cost effective to spend more money on the OS than what the laptop is worth.

Hi Foxtrot,
not good news im afraid.
Even with the little i can see, the key in use is for a Dell machine making it a non-genuine install.

If its been updating i can summise an activation exploit is in use, which will be overwritten on a clean install, and if you look at the bottom of the full report i suspect there are some dell references.

If you want to re-install Ultimate you will have to purchase a genuine licence
Expensive and hard to come by nowadays.
Boys from your side of the pond will know the reputable ones.

Roy

torchwood said:

Hi Foxtrot,
not good news im afraid.
Even with the little i can see, the key in use is for a Dell machine making it a non-genuine install.

If its been updating i can summise an activation exploit is in use, which will be overwritten on a clean install, and if you look at the bottom of the full report i suspect there are some dell references.

If you want to re-install Ultimate you will have to purchase a genuine licence
Expensive and hard to come by nowadays.
Boys from your side of the pond will know the reputable ones.

Roy

Thank you for your help and time trying to solve this. The laptop works well on safe mode but then it has problems on normal start. I guess I can back up the information. Is there any way to repair the current version with the ISO copy of Win 7 ultimate or it's a lost cause.

If so, I guess I can go to Vista since I have the original product key. I am wondering what would that do to MS office and Photoshop.

There are a lot of programs on that laptop is there a better tool than the internal Win tool to remove those programs that I dont need?

Backup your data.
Download Win 10 installation iso.
Extract to a flash disk.
Under Windows, launch setup.
You will end with a win 10 Pro with all your data and programs.

Megahertz07 said:

Backup your data.
Download Win 10 installation iso.
Extract to a flash disk.
Under Windows, launch setup.
You will end with a win 10 Pro with all your data and programs.

Thank you for the advice, but I dont think is very cost effective to spend more money on the OS that what the laptop costs. And if you were referring to the free Win 10 upgrade, I believe that expired and it was for machines running Win 7/8. So I think my options are limited, back up the info and either reinstall Vista or Linux.

If I reinstall Vista would it delete my MS Office and Photoshop?

- You can download and install win 10 for free. The free Win 10 upgrade is still working.
- Not sure but I think that to downgrade to Vista you have to do a Clean install. And Vista support has ended (no updates). Forget Vista.
Try to upgrade to Win 10, if it doesn't work, install a Linux (Zorin or Lubuntu).

That would depend upon the OS being genuine, need to see the full tool reports.

It wont upgrade a non-genuine.

Roy