Windows 7 ultimate reinstall

[millicent]

Hello, I have a laptop i purchased a few years ago off of ebay that I assume has a "unofficial" version of win7-32 ultimate installed along with a bunch of diesel diagnostic software. The hard drive died, I have a mirror image of the hard drive and the product key that was on the win 7. I thought (or was hoping) that the operating system (win7) was also on mirrior image..Is it not?? If i try to download a win7-32 ISO from microsoft they ask for product key just to download and says invalid product key. How do I get this up and running again on a new hard drive? Thanks

[dasteph]

pm me and i will help you.

[Tony30703]

IMHO If the laptop was originally bought from a mainstream manufacturer with the OS installed by that manufacturer, I think that Microsoft may not support "re-use" of the product key even though you are using it on the same hardware.
If the W7 was bought from Microsoft it should be able to recognise the product key, although I admit I have never actually tried to DL from Microsoft.

This doesn't solve the problem, but I think it may explain it.