Ok guys and gals, I'll cut straight to the point...
Girlfriend knocked relatively new Dell XPS 15 off the arm of the chair earlier this evening. Machine initially looked ok, but after getting one successful boot out of it, Windows started giving random errors/locking up. Machine now won't boot. In-built diagnostics confirm hard drive failure.
Right now I'm weighing up options and I'm leaning towards just getting another hard disk and firing it in.
The problem with that is, being the seasoned geek that I am... I never used the Dell utilities to create their 'recovery disks'. This means that with a blank hard disk in the machine I've no easy way to re-install Windows and get it activated with the licence that the machine legitimately has.
Can anyone offer any advice on the easiest course of action? I have multiple legitimate retail copies of Windows 7 but based on previous experience with OEM licences, I'm presuming I can't use the key on the bottom of the machine with one of the retail disks.
Any advice greatly appreciated
.
Girlfriend knocked relatively new Dell XPS 15 off the arm of the chair earlier this evening. Machine initially looked ok, but after getting one successful boot out of it, Windows started giving random errors/locking up. Machine now won't boot. In-built diagnostics confirm hard drive failure.
Right now I'm weighing up options and I'm leaning towards just getting another hard disk and firing it in.
The problem with that is, being the seasoned geek that I am... I never used the Dell utilities to create their 'recovery disks'. This means that with a blank hard disk in the machine I've no easy way to re-install Windows and get it activated with the licence that the machine legitimately has.
Can anyone offer any advice on the easiest course of action? I have multiple legitimate retail copies of Windows 7 but based on previous experience with OEM licences, I'm presuming I can't use the key on the bottom of the machine with one of the retail disks.
Any advice greatly appreciated
.