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.

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    24·
    2 days ago

    There’s a non-zero chance the license is stored on the motherboard of the laptop (ie, embedded in BIOS).

    • Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      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.