first time posting so please bear with me.
my Dell Studio 1558 running windows-7 recently died. the motherboard somehow got fried. i pulled the hard-drive out and recycled the laptop. a friend gave me his old dell inspiron (running Vista). it's slow and freezes up alot when surfing the internet.
i recently remembered i have a "Reinstallation DVD" for windows-7 that came with my (now dead) Studio 1558.
i was wondering if i can (legally) replace Vista with Windows-7? i want to do a clean install, wipe everything off the Inspiron laptop and load Windows-7.
I ran a diagnostic and the Inspiron can run Windows-7.
i presume if i try installing windows-7, i would get prompted for some sort of activiation key (which i don't have). since my old laptop is dead and gone, is there someone or someplace i can reach out to where they can give me the activation key since i will really only be running one version of the OS?
one last note: i still have the old hard drive from the dead studio 1558 - could i leverage that somehow?
hope i posted this in the correct forum, thanks
LouNYC