We took over management of a business that has 3 HP computers, but has invalid Windows installed

[Pwilliams98]

We took over management of a business that has 3 computers all with invalid Windows 7 Enterprise installed, so the OS wont activate.  The prior IT company wiped all the harddrives with an image and the recovery partitions are gone.  The computers have no OEM stickers or other indicator of what the original operating system was that they shipped with...  How do we find out what they shipped with so we can obtain the proper recovery disks?

All 3 computers are 

HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF

Product No: P0D52UT#ABA

[banhien]

Hi,

I could not find Operating System information for the product (P0D52UT#ABA). There are many options for the whole series and old owner may not buy Windows at all, but FreeDOS

Preinstalled
Windows 10 Pro 64
Windows 10 Home 64
Windows 8.1 Pro 64 
Windows 8.1 64 
Windows 7 Professional 64 (available through downgrade rights from Windows 10 Pro)  
Windows 7 Professional 32 (available through downgrade rights from Windows 10 Pro)  
Windows 7 Professional 64 
Windows 7 Professional 32 

Pre-installed (Other)
FreeDOS 2.0

Do they have any Windows installed on them now ? You can use keyfinder tool to find those keys

(a) If Windows 8.1 or 10, the keys should still be in BIOS of machines and you can easily re-use the keys,

(b) No key, my guess is old owner bought machines with FreeDOS and using "pirate" software.

Regards.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @Pwilliams98

If you are located in the USA/Canada, call HP at this number and order a set of W7 Pro recovery disks.

1-800-334-5144

Have the serial number of one of the PC's handy to give to the customer services rep.

You should be able to use the same set on each PC.

If I were a betting man, I would say that the PC's came with a W8.1 or W10 Pro license with a downgrade to W7 Pro by the factory.

Now if you still have the W7 enterprise operating system installed, I have zipped up and attached a simple tool you can run to verify the version of the Windows key encrypted in the BIOS.

After you have that info, you can also order a set of recovery disks for the licensed OS if you don't want W7 pro.