Windows 7 Professional Serial no
Community Forums/General Help/Windows 7 Professional Serial no
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| Hello My laptop came with Win7Pro preinstalled (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E520). There is an ungodly amount of manufacturer's tripe also preinstalled and I just cannot seem to get rid of it all. Startup time is awful and no matter what I do it doesn't get any better. My internet connection is poor whereas it's fine on every other PC in the house. So to the point - the serial in the battery compartment is for Win7Pro. My Windows 7 CD is the Home Premium edition. I fear I already know the answer, but will the serial number work (in whatever form) with the CD I have? Buggered if I'm buying yet another Windows licence. |
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| Is that a new machine? Sounds like some intern made a mistake when packing it up. If you got it from a physical store, simply asking nicely is often a good way to get them to swap it for the correct disc (results may vary), especially if it's really new and you have the receipts and so on. |
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| No, you misunderstand - I didn't get a disc at all. The Windows 7 Home Premium CD I have is one I bought when Windows 7 first came out. The laptop is about six months old. It has a recovery partition which is next to useless, as all that will do is reinstall all the crap I've already got (and would like to get shut of forever). |
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| I understood that the DVDs were effectively the same for all editions (though 1 version of the DVD is for 32-bit editions and one for 64-bit editions) and it's just the serial that determines what version (Home, Pro, etc) you end up with -- in which case, it might work. There may be more to it, though, so best to read up... or just try it and see what it says! Alternatively, assuming you've uninstalled all you can manually uninstall, use Sysinternals' AutoRuns to uncheck the startup programs you can identify. Stick to the top four or five sections in the Everything pane (don't touch filters, protocols, installed items, etc) and just untick the programs you can identify. There's also this, which is supposed to be good for this sort of thing (not tried it) and things like CCleaner to tidy up. EDIT: Apparently you have to build a modified ISO to do the all-versions thing... I'd go with uninstall/AutoRuns myself! Last edited 2012 |
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| I don't know about the Win7 home DVD -- but: I got the retail Windows 7 Pro upgrade DVD myself. When I first installed it, it asked for the serial number. It uses this to determine what version of windows you own. There is an option to install -without- a serial (which gives you a 2-week trial period). If you pick tha toption and skip the serial, it brings up a screen asking you to select what edition of windows to install (Home premium, pro, ultimate, etc., with a bold warning to make sure that you have a proper key for the selected version, or you won't be able to unlock it with your key once the 2-week trial ends. Given that the PRO disc gave me the option to pick home as well as the higher 'ultimate' edition, I'd say that there is a good chance that your Home disc may contain pro as well. As blitz-support mentioned, there IS a difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit media. (Windows 7 also allows you to use the same media for corporate & retail keys, unlike windows XP where you can't use a corporate key on OEM media and vice-versa) |
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| Well, reinstalled from Home Premium but haven't got as far as setting up for Win7Pro as I've picked today - of ALL days - to do the job when the Lenovo support site is on its arse so I can't get any drivers. Sat here twiddling my thumbs now until it gets sorted. Two hours wasted already. |
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| ...and four hours later, still fannying about! The good news is that Win7Pro is activated. The bad news is that I have no sound, despite the drivers being installed, and there are two unknown devices in device manager and I don't know what the hell they are. :/ |
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| Those 'unknown devices' are annoying, but it is possible (with some manual work) to find out what they are: - Go to the device manager - Go to the properties of the unknown device - Go to the 'details' tab - Look for the 'hardware IDs' - Under there, you'll see a long string that contains a VEN_ (Vendor ID) and DEV_ (Device ID) - Go to http://www.pcidatabase.com - Search by Vendor and/or device ID to find a normal english desciption of the hardware in question. You can normally find the drivers based on this. If not, check under the 'compatible IDs' property in the device manager, it may list compatible devices, and there's a decent chance that /their/ drivers will work with the device. (I ran into a snag when upgrading a Fujitsu laptop from Vista to XP -- despite installing all the XP driverrs from the website, one unknown component remained. turned out to be some IBM component, and succesfully located and installed a driver from IBM's website) What blows my mind is after ALL these years, and the information apparently being available, Microsoft never bothered to do a lookup on their own to TELL YOU what the freaking 'unknown device' might be. |
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| Thanks - the info helped, but that site didn't. Turned out it was the firewire port and power management driver. |
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| Microsoft never bothered to do a lookup on their own to TELL YOU what the freaking 'unknown device' might be. To be fair, MS dont make the hardware, which in turn, shouldnt really be expected to provide drivers/info for them, which will obviously lead to them having to do more support and the device manufacturers support teams will end up with their feet up on their desks swigging coffee. IMO, they should not be allowed to preinstall all this arseware that people obviously hate, it crams up peoples machines, extends reinstall times (Then the extra time to remove it all) and half the stuff is usually crap versions of stuff you can get for free anyway! If the hardware manufactures had any sense, they would do the decent thing and use the recovery partition just for Windows, and provide something like, I dunno... A SINGLE DVD-ROM for the drivers and crapware... Customers would be happy! But they dont, and, again... Even though MS have nothing to do with it... They get the blame... Mad! :D Dabz Last edited 2012 |
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