Okay I'm going to ask a potentially very obvious question that will make me look like a computer handicap, but I've never been able to find where the list of my computer's parts are or what their specs are.
find computer model on case or inside
google
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profit
Alright,
So what steps do I take about this whole windows thing?
ALSO
Reinstall via internet, as in download it?
How big is Windows, lol.
Back up anything important to an external hard drive, DVD, or flash device before installing the board and try booting it up normally after installation. If it doesn't boot properly, insert your Windows installation disk, and it's pretty straight-forward from here.
Provided you own a Windows key, but the installation disk is destroyed, you can either call HP to get another one, or (this may be illegal in your area) download the media.
An install of Windows 7 (after updates) takes around 30GiB - 50GiB
Then why do I need to reinstall if I'm keeping the same HD, and why do I need to reactivate
microsoft doesn't want people just putting their old hard drive in a new computer
It also prevents piracy, seeing as a when you activate your copy of Windows, and there's a major hardware change between the computer it was activated with (most cases the same computer, but a different board, this still counts as a major hardware change) and another computer, the key becomes non-genuine and in most cases cannot be activated again. Activating by phone doesn't check for hardware changes, seeing as a representative is giving you a code to put in, it circumvents any hardware detection but only works if the key is genuine.
