So, I’ve been writing a 175k word One Piece fanfic for about 6 months. Most of my writing is done on a 10 year-old laptop I dug out of the closet while I wait for my kid to finish sports practice. Today, the hard-drive died. (Thankfully I have a cloud backup.)
Now, without a laptop, I have nothing to continue working on. I can’t afford a new laptop. Just glad I didn’t lose all my work.
This is the answer here. If OP has any techy friends they should tell them. I have a dozen HDDs and SSDs and RAM of varying sizes lying around. Most of them even work.
I tend to canabalize parts as computers pass through my hands. I frequently upgrade family member’s laptops for them. They buy the parts and I provide the labor of cloning windows and putting in the parts. Often the brand new (but smaller) ram/ssd are unwanted.
It’s the OS license that’s the main problem.
Meh just install Linux and carry on with libreoffice. Ubuntu is easy and free
There’s a non-zero chance the license is stored on the motherboard of the laptop (ie, embedded in BIOS).
It’s nearly certain. OEM activation has been stored on the motherboard since XP. XP-7 required a matching OEM cert (easily found online), while 8+ have a unique license in the BIOS. For these, you just reinstall the OS, skip the key during setup, and let it connect afterwards for all of the updates and whatnot.
Now, licenses to other apps, such as Word, are not so simple.
Powershell
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iexThat should be fine. I haven’t had to do it but everywhere I’ve seen says it’s tied to your hardware and it should be fine when you reinstall windows. Though with a dead laptop I’m not sure if you’re able to get a USB with the bootable media.
Your license is tied to the laptop.
Windows should remember the BIOS and activate fine, I think. And as posted below, you can extract they key if that doesn’t work.
You can get the install medium on a USB stick from Microsoft for free.
There’s probably a sticker with the license code on the laptop somewhere.