I have Win 7 Professional SP1 running on a Dell Inspiron.
Is there any way at all of doing a repair install? I am aware that MS have closed down the Digital River ISO downloads and I know, having tried it, that the so-called MS alternative, Microsoft Products Recovery, will not work with Dell PCs. Is there any way at all (apart from buying a retail version of the OS) of doing a repair install?
The point is that I have had my PC since 2010 and I've put a massive amount of time and effort into getting it as I want it. Using the Dell recovery partition would be an act of supreme desperation. Even just reinstalling all the programs I have installed over the years would be an exhausting task. And adding all the tweaks and adjustments that I have had to make would be soul-destroying. I try to keep notes of what I've done but there's a limit to what you can do.
And what really annoys me is that once upon a time the PC manufacturers such as Dell would supply a full copy of the OS - Dell did when I bought a PC with XP on it. When I bought my last PC with Win 7 on it I would have been prepared to pay a reasonable price for a full copy on disc of the OS but Dell would not do this.