Hello,
This is my first post here.
Here is my situation:
I have two identical Acer Aspire One (722) netbooks each running Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit).
The OS came pre-installed on the netbooks with no Windows 7 disks. There is a Windows 7 product key number on the underside of each computer.
One of the netbooks experienced a HDD crash that I have been unable to recover from. I am not able to boot. I tried several different repair utilities and recovery disks. I am able to see all the files and folders when I view the drive using a SATA to USB adapter cable on another PC.
I am going to install a new SSD to replace the failed HDD.
I created an image of the HDD from the other identical working netbook. (I failed to create an image or back-up of the HDD that failed - my bad.)
I want to install this image onto the new SSD that will then go into the netbook that has the bad HDD.
I assume at this point I need to do something with the activation licenses or product keys, because I don't want to do anything illegal. I also don't want to have to buy a new copy of Windows 7, since I feel I already had bought two working copies as part of the two netbook purchases.
So my question is, do I then have to reenter or change the product key from the newly installed (restored) image file from the working netbook and use the product key that was originally associated with the netbook that had the failed HDD? How do I do this? Will this plan work?
I want to end up with two working netbooks each with their own legal and activated version of Windows 7 with the two product keys that I have, just as I had before I suffered the HDD failure.
I realize I could have avoided all this if I had created an image and back-up of the HDD that actually failed. Unfortunately I did not do this. Lesson learned.
Thank you very much for your help to this newbie.
This is my first post here.
Here is my situation:
I have two identical Acer Aspire One (722) netbooks each running Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit).
The OS came pre-installed on the netbooks with no Windows 7 disks. There is a Windows 7 product key number on the underside of each computer.
One of the netbooks experienced a HDD crash that I have been unable to recover from. I am not able to boot. I tried several different repair utilities and recovery disks. I am able to see all the files and folders when I view the drive using a SATA to USB adapter cable on another PC.
I am going to install a new SSD to replace the failed HDD.
I created an image of the HDD from the other identical working netbook. (I failed to create an image or back-up of the HDD that failed - my bad.)
I want to install this image onto the new SSD that will then go into the netbook that has the bad HDD.
I assume at this point I need to do something with the activation licenses or product keys, because I don't want to do anything illegal. I also don't want to have to buy a new copy of Windows 7, since I feel I already had bought two working copies as part of the two netbook purchases.
So my question is, do I then have to reenter or change the product key from the newly installed (restored) image file from the working netbook and use the product key that was originally associated with the netbook that had the failed HDD? How do I do this? Will this plan work?
I want to end up with two working netbooks each with their own legal and activated version of Windows 7 with the two product keys that I have, just as I had before I suffered the HDD failure.
I realize I could have avoided all this if I had created an image and back-up of the HDD that actually failed. Unfortunately I did not do this. Lesson learned.
Thank you very much for your help to this newbie.