Win 7 Pro iso file

Tranquil Hegemo · 23 Feb 2018

Morning all,

I have just bought a refurbished Lenovo laptop with Windows 7 Professional on it (ex corp machine). It has accepted the key from under the battery and has connected and done some updates so I don't have any doubts about the veracity of the license. However I am looking to upgrade it to an SSD so thought that I would install a clean version of Windows at the same time to get rid of the few Lenovo specific additions that its seem to be bundled in with it.

I have been to the website that Roy has linked to previously -
Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files) - and put the key in but it gives the error "The product key you entered appears to be for software pre-installed by the device manufacturer. Please contact the device manufacturer for software recovery options".

Guessing that I am stumped but thought I would ask if there is a way around the issue or am I stuck with imaging the version with Lenovo additions to the new SSD?

Barman58 · 23 Feb 2018

Yes, Microsoft pass on the responsibility for all support to the major OEM's when they sell them cheap bulk licences, Seems reasonable to me but does not really help legitimate users such as you.
What microsoft expect you to do is to contact Lenovo for your install media, which contains the bloatware - Catch 22

What you could do is, ( assuming its still on the system ), to use the built-in recovery partition to wipe and restore the system to shipped condition and then use the Add/Remove programs to remove those Bloatware items you will never use, (retain any that relate to special features, fingerprint reader, special keys, etc), this will give you as clean a copy as is possible - the major issue with this is that you will end up with a system that is out of date and will spend some considerable time updating to latest version.

You may be able to Beg, Borrow or ~~Steal~~ a suitable Retail install media from a friend, relative etc, as the disks, as long as they are the same version, Home, Pro, Etc and the same bit architecture, should install with your key, of course the same issue with updates applies try to get one with SP1 installed to save a lot of updating

There are some issues known with major updating of Win 7 and there are threads giving advice in the Installation forum on this site

SIW2 · 23 Feb 2018

@Tranquil Hegemo,

HERE

Tranquil Hegemo · 27 Feb 2018

Thanks for that - looked into stripping the excess off the original but eventually borrowed a copy of Win 7 Pro from someone and that has installed fine with the key under the battery. Quite why I had to go through such a long winded process is a bit of a mystery but we got there in the end.

Thanks again