Complete hard disk failure on Laptop

Thanks ejn63, I have found the product key. Is it possible to download the iso for the win7 home premium OA by presenting the info I have to dell? Incidently, I downloaded a toolkit from the HD manufacturer, and it found many errors on the disk. It was able to repair them but of course it does this by marking them as unavailable. I believe some of them may have been in the recovery area as that would not load at all, even before the repair. Luckily, I managed to extract all the headteachers files by connecting the hd to my laptop and copying them. Obviously the errors did not reside in the area that the docs were filed.

Having done the repair, I was able to install a copy of Win XP but this is only until I get the new hard disk, The HD is definitely flakey as checkdisk kicked in as I was installing updates. Not to be trusted I think. People never tell you but I am sure this laptop must have suffered a physical shock to cause the amount of errors I detected.

I had an email from M Vikram suggesting some action but was not able to follow his instructions re PM and friends. (Are you there M Vikram)

Anyway, thanks for your help.

JP

I have the same problem as mender 12-07-2012 - dead hard drive - but don't know who to contact. My Inspiron 1750 runs Windows 7 but the OS was not supplied with the machine. It was bought in the US, but I have relocated and now live in Australia. I have the product key and the service tag, but Dell tech support will not let me email them. The Dell website sends me in circles. A contact number (preferably in Australia) would be great.

I think Dell owes me a copy of the OS, but what do I know? I have a new hard drive ready to install. Problem is complicated by CD/DVD drive also not working (this laptop was definitely not one of my best buys). Three years old and I may as well trash it, except I bought a hard drive to fix it.

Thanks for any help.

Download an iso from here www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links use your code to activate. Mine asked for the code during installation but then said it didn't work, try online, so I did and it worked. Make sure you use the same version as was installed originally or the code will not work. I am assuming you have access to another PC to download it to and burn the ISO. Use CDBurnerXP for this. The fact that you are using a legal code to activate this OS I think makes it OK. It will not work with an invalid code.

Thanks for your help, mender. I'm back up and running.

Gives you a warm feeling doesn't it. Glad you got it going.