My friend has a computer with Dell windows 7 home premium as do I. She is having trouble with her computer and I offered to do a reinstall for her but she can't find her OS disk. Can I use my computer's OS disk or will that conflict with anything?
Whats the license type? Is it same with yours?
etc: Home Premium, Ultimate
yes they are both home premium...... and both 64 bit
Welcome ivory214 :)
Please check this tutorial for a clean re-install
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
Since she has the license, i'd suggest a clean install activation :)
I attempted to do a clean install but Windows 7 didn't prompt me for the license number, it just skipped that step altogether and windows setup went well until it asked me to restart.... the default wallpaper loads but no taskbar or desktop icons.... could this be because of the different product key codes?
Normally, only "recycle bin" would be on the desktop with standard wallpaper but no task bar? Now that's weird.
It wouldn't be in "auto-hide" mode by default as well. No harm trying but have you tried pressing the windows key on the keyboard?
Yeah, no recycle bin or taskbar unless I start in safe mode.... I also installed advanced systemcare to check if it picked up any errors, the system restarts, and a registry defrag was scheduled, and runs until I get an error that says "C:\Boot\BCD is being defragged....... Failed".
What does that mean?
I would start over using the tutorial DocBrown suggested which has a link to an installer in step one.
Stay away from Advanced System Care, you don't need that.
Welcome ivory214 :)
Please check this tutorial for a clean re-install
You should be following the tutorial provided by Doc Brown and Golden which has helped countless thousands of users gets perfect reinstalls without a single complaint.
Be sure that this time when you boot the provided installer, burned to DVD or written to flash stick with the tool also provided, that you delete all partitions using the Drive Options shown in Steps 7 and 8 of Clean Install Windows 7.
Pay special attention in the tutorial to how drivers are handled in Win7. Put your Network adapter driver in your backup so you can install it if its needed to get online to run all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates. There should only be one or two drivers still missing in Device Manager after this, imported from the PC's Support Downloads webpage.
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