I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1012 appox. 10 years ago. I used the "anytime upgrade" and purchased the 7 Professional. Recently, I chose to use the Factory Image Repair which of course returned the computer to 7 "Starter" I have the Product Key but not the necessary Update Key. How can I retrieve that key?
Look in C drive to see if there is a windows.old folder which might allow you to roll back to the old install so you can retrieve the Product Key with a keyfinder. If not then you'll need to try to find the purchase receipt if you bought it from MS which might allow them to retrieve the key. But this is almost always done when you create an account and buy the key through it where the purchase becomes stored along with the Product Info and key in your account.
Did you create any backup images of the Professional install as is the modern way to be able to recover it to working condition if System Restore or the other Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 do not work? Factory Recovery is the worst install one can have and almost always destrutive so nothing is really left unless you got lucky and the old install was archived in a windows.old folder.
If you're stuck with Starter and don't want it then I think I'd consider shrinking its partition to Clean Install Windows 10 Technical Preview the next generation OS and logical successor to Win7 which is even better, so much so that I haven't even been back to WIn7 since I installed it three months ago. But be aware it is only a Technical Preview so there are small bugs and in the rarest cases it casues problems on certain hardware that aren't yet sorted. But if you experience what many of us have you'll have a better OS than WIn7, and be on track for beta in Spring and the final release next fall. If it goes like WIn7 did there will also be discounted and free offers for beta testers. So it's something to strongly consider if you can't recover Professional and Starter isn't enough.
Last edited by gregrocker; 09 Jan 2015 at 06:34.
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