what does COA on laptop mean?

[gychang52]

I plan to get a thinkpad X220 from ebay, I am told it has a windows 7 pro, COA sticker inside the battery cover. it does not come with a CD.

1. can I legally able to install the win 7 pro?
2. where can I get a disc to install? (don't have a legal copy)

thanks,

 

[popatim]

1: COA = Certificate of Authenticity which means its a real copy of win7
2: You can purchase your factory disks right from Lenovo. The COA you have is for an OEM version of windows that MS sells to vendors really cheap and is not valid with other retail versions. MS does not support or let you download these versions; they 100% vendor supported.

 

[gychang49]

anyone have an idea as what price range maybe?

 

[jaguarskx]

anyone have an idea as what price range maybe?

You will have to call Lenovo to find out.


You can also try to download Win 7 Pro image from Microsoft. I know you can do so for Win 7 Home Premium, but not positive about the Pro version. Click the following and enter the product key on the COA sticker. However, you still need to go to Lenovo's website to download drivers specific to your laptop model. Also note that since it will be the standard version of Windows 7 instead of the custom version from Lenovo some devices may not work.

The hard drive in my Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 basically died so I downloaded the Win 7 ISO from the link below using the product key located on my COA sticker and I installed all the drivers I could from Lenovo for that specific model. Everything works except for bluetooth.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7


Note, I have read that Microsoft is slowly removing Win 7 ISO files (various languages and maybe the Pro version as well) from their servers. Your particular product key is specific to Windows 7 Pro, and it will likely not work for Home Premium.