[candy1567]

I hope its not a Dell laptop

I had this problem recently on my daughters laptop, i repaired the OS using a win 7 disk that i had, and it worked a treat until it wanted me to input the serial key

everytime i entered the key it said that i had mistyped it and to ring to activate, upon doin this it again said it couldn't activate.

i spoke to a microsoft rep, and he stated that although the key was a genuine, as it was a dell laptop, i needed a dell version of windows 7 or i coulnd't use the key that came with the laptop, he stated that del put somthing in the bias so only their version of windows 7 could be used. (not sure if this do this to the bias, but def couldn't activate windows!!)

So i found a dell version of windows7 on the tinternet, downloaded that and then used that to repair the OS, and hey presto, it worked a treat and didn't ask me for the windows key.

dont know if this will apply to u, as u want to replace the OS where i just repaired it.

JUliex