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#1
Re-installing Windows 7 on old computer
My house mate for some stupid reason, ignored all my advice and, went to a pawn shop and bought an old dell computer. When he brought it home and I had set it up we discovered that the hard drive works only intermittently.
I went out and bought a brand new hard drive (mail order). When it gets here I want to install Windows 7 on it. I figure since it is a Dell Machine, and has the Windows serial number on a sticker on top of it, this shouldn't be a problem.
But I am a little worried. My own computer is a Mac. I have Windows 7 installed on this machine in a partition. But mine is probably a much more recent version of Windows 7 (service pack 2 or later, I think--I bought it less than a year ago). His is service pack 1. Mine is 64bit. His I don't know. Thankfully we both have "Home Premium" so that won't be an issue.
My question is this:
Can I use my install disk coupled with his serial number to re-install his Windows system? If I can't, where can I get a copy of an install disk?
At this point, I don't want to have to buy another copy of Windows since I don't want to spend a lot of money on this project and I don't know my housemate well enough to know if he will pay me back even for my out of pocket purchase of a new hard drive. Or should I just install linux on it and tell him to "learn a new OS"