I bought my laptop at Staples and never got a O's disk.

[wbleatham]

I bought a notebook from Staples and never was able to obtain an os disk. The Hitachi hard drive died three months after I bought it. The new HDD came pre installed with win 7. That next HDD died 5 months later. The next HDD I got from HP. It died 4 months later. Now two years later and after doing some research, I have found another HDD for this POS. But it does not have an OS installed.

[Photoray002 · Accepted solution]

Hello @wbleatham

Does your laptop have the COA sticker with a Windows 7 key?

If so, you can download a copy of Win 7 and create nstallation media.

Take a look at this post by @CherylG explaining the process.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/HP-smark-drive-error-301/m-p/64...

[wbleatham]

Thank you I do have that license key sticker on my laptop. I will more than likely need to pay them a hundred or so for this win 7 OS. I don't understand why though. I did buy this hunk of junk brand new but never got the disk. Apple usually provides that when you buy a new computer or a link connecter related to the system you have. I didn't even have any link connecter for this machine. HP sucks. Their quality has gone down so bad that I am seriously considering going back to Apple.

[Photoray002]

Hold on a minute...

Where are you getting the idea that you have to pay for Windows 7 if you already have a COA key?

The link I gave you talks about downloading Win 7 (its a free download).

Follow the instructions it gives.

If the COA key you have is valid, it will activate Windows 7 once you install it.

And HP as well as most all Windows PC MFG's stopped giving out install DVDs after the Windows XP era.

But they also gave you the ability to create your own recovery media when you first bought the PC.

It was up to you to create it.

If you did not before a failure occured, then Im sorry to say you have no one but yourself to blame.

Good luck.