Hi There. Found this site looking for help and it looks exciting with everything you may want to know. My problem is i bought a used Dell Latitude laptop and come to find out i can not install any drivers (webcam,etc.) on account of it is running a counterfeit windows. I want to remove this and install one that i can buy from Amazon or Ebay. What should i look for when buying a disc? Thanks for your help. Tom
Welcome to the forum. Is there not a oem key sticker for windows Dells normally come with a genuine windows and a sticker
Most Win 7 ultimate are pirate.
You should reinstall windows as you don't know what it's on it.
You can reinstall:
- By doing a Factory Restore (if you still have the restore partition on your disk). You can launch it from BIOS.
- Look under the laptop and under the battery for the COA sticker with the installation key.
Tel us what you have found.
looks like that model was sold with Vista!!
wait for the guys from your side of the pond, to advise best options, unlikely to be Ultimate .
Roy
Thanks for the help so far. Looked under the battery and seen a product key number (bunch of letters) and it is for vista. I dont have any discs so kind of stuck. Dont understand what a OEM or COA means and dont know where to find them. So I should still get a disc? Only ones i have seen are reboot ones. Thanks again
OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer They are the ones who install windows on the PC before it's sold.
And this is a COA or Certificate of Authenticity, Every PC sold before Windows 8 had a COA attached somewhere on the case, so the end user could reinstall windows if they wanted to.
What do you mean by reboot ones ?
I sent you a link to purchase W7 Pro if you want.
Newegg also has Home Premium for $99 but the description says it's a download, so I did not post it.
And you can always install a free Linux distro.
https://www.linuxmint.com/
The leading operating system for PCs, IoT devices, servers and the cloud | Ubuntu
Sorry ,,,, i think i meant Recovery disc..what does that Linux do? Thanks
Quote