Solved Hard Disk Crashed, New SSD and Faded COA

[gjpwiz]

My HP pavilion dv4t-1500 laptop with a 500GB hard disk died. I bought a new 256 GB SSD to replace it. If I order the HP recovery disks, they will most likely not work as the new hard drive size is different (as the HP forums say)

Also I have read in forums that I can use the COA product key to install a fresh copy of windows 7. However 6 characters of the product key is faded

If the recovery disks will not work, will microsoft provide me with the original COA product key so that I could do a fresh install?

I have bought an expensive SSD and I really do not want to be faced with the prospect of having to buy a new windows license!!

 

[indianacarnie]

Try Speccy : Speccy - Download

It'll give you the key. Look under operating system.

Theres many fine tutorials here to use when you transfer/reinstall to your new ssd. I know..... I used them myself!

 

[gjpwiz]

The problem is the old hard disk crashed. So I cannot boot from it or even access the data.

 

[LittleJay]

My HP pavilion dv4t-1500 laptop with a 500GB hard disk died. I bought a new 256 GB SSD to replace it. If I order the HP recovery disks, they will most likely not work as the new hard drive size is different (as the HP forums say)

Also I have read in forums that I can use the COA product key to install a fresh copy of windows 7. However 6 characters of the product key is faded

If the recovery disks will not work, will microsoft provide me with the original COA product key so that I could do a fresh install?

I have bought an expensive SSD and I really do not want to be faced with the prospect of having to buy a new windows license!!

That is interesting, because I have used the Windows Recovery and Driver DVDs that I ordered from HP to re-install Windows 7 on my HP laptop, when replaced the 500 Gb HDD with a 128 Gb SSD.

 

[gjpwiz]

Thanks LittleJay. I saw many users in the HP forums complaning that it did not work. Maybe I should order it and give it a try. Which HP laptop and windows version do you have?

 

[LittleJay]

My laptop is a HP ProBooks and I have Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64 bit installed on it. The Windows 7 DVD that HP sent me contained only the OS and not all the bloat ware that came pre-installed originally. Those programs were available to re-install from the driver/software DVD that they sent along with the Windows 7 DVD, but you can pick and choose which ones you want to install.

 

[gjpwiz]

I see, did you order the DVDs via HP's website? In my case, when I go thru the HP support website it looks like they will send system recovery discs and not the original windows 7 DVD. These are backup discs that are used to restore the OS and all the bloatware into the new hard drive. It is these recovery disks that are probably not compatible with hard drive changes.

 

[LittleJay]

No, I ordered the disks from HP over the phone. And yes, the disks they send will recover your computer to factory specs and automatically activate Windows when it is installed, but like I mentioned before, the bloat ware came on the driver/software DVD, at least in my case, so I only installed what I wanted.

 

[gjpwiz]

Excellent. I will just go ahead and order the recovery media. will post an update once i try it out. By the way, how is the performance on the SSD?

 

[LittleJay]

The performance is totally awesome!

 

[gjpwiz]

I got the recovery disks from HP yesterday. There were 3 of them (2 for the OS and 1 for the drivers.) I ran the recovery process and it restored windows 7 without any issues! The recovery process required me to use the 2 disks for the OS. However it did install the bloatware too but that is fine.

After going thru so many forums i was of the impression it would not work, but thanks a bunch LittleJay for your input!

 

[LittleJay]

You are welcome! Glad you got things sorted. Sorry to hear that the disks they sent for the OS contained the factory bloatware. That was the case with the disks they sent me.