Laptop Formatting Questions

CandyStripes05

So my buddy sold me his ex-roommates laptop (he moved from Ontario to B.C. and didn't take it with him) the price... in true Canadian fashion was a nice cold case of beer. How can one go wrong for that price?! and now I have my very first laptop

Now my questions are:

1) It does not have a battery nor charge cable, will just buying a cable be a good idea? It works on my other friends cable, but is it a good idea to run it without a battery in it? I plan on using it more or less as a secondary desktop, so I can live with it always needing to be plugged in.

2) I plan to format it and reinstall Windows because who knows what crap is on it. I do not have any discs for drivers or his version of windows. I do however have my windows install disc from my computer and I have used multiple programs to detect the Windows key from the laptop, they all came up with the same key so I'm hoping that it is right.

Will my Windows 7 Professional disc in combination with his Windows 7 Ultimate key work? I read online that the Win 7 dics contain all versions of Windows (home, pro, ultimate, etc) and then I also read that they stopped making them like that....

3) Do I need to backup any drivers before hand or can everything be downloaded and installed after I re-install windows? ex. If I do not back-up any drivers and I reinstall windows am I screwed? or will it function enough to allow me to install all necessary drivers?

Thank you all who are able to chime in and help me out : ) Polycount has yet to fail me in building and repairing my computers!

SlyRipper

1) Normally you remove the akku/battery from the laptop if you gonna use it a longer time span with cable, as it would affect the battery negatively. So only cable is good

2) If you gonna use the key from the laptop than you need to install the exactly same version as before, else the key won't count. You could also on the other hand install your own windows with your own keys, works the same

In addition: NO, you can NOT mix keys from different windows versions. you need the exact one!

3) Depends on how old the laptop is, but I rarely think he kept the install files, installed drivers are nonsense to keep. So check the laptop for the hardware and use google or the driver's website (amd, nvidia, asus, etc) Mostly you just need mainboard and graphic card drivers to install and everything works, as Win7 searches automatically new drivers (except those). back-up drivers won't work as they integrated within the registy and other stuff so you definitely want to reinstall them. most important is the graphic card driver or you need to look at a very low resolution with just 256 colors or so :P

Have fun with your new laptop!

CandyStripes05

1) perfect!

2) you're right : ( but now i see if I convert my disc into an ISO image and then remove the ei.cfg file from it, It will then become a universal disc for all windows editions. And will prompt you to pick an edition during setup given you have a proper key already, which will allow me to use the current ultimate key : D

3) It's a HP Pavilion dv6-2005ax Notebook PC, so once I reinstall windows I will still be able to use the laptop enough to find and download those drivers right? I guess I could always use my desktop and transfer the drivers via usb to be installed if I have to :P

almost forgot to say thank you

SlyRipper

for 3) that's also possible. As last advice download an anti-virus program like avast or AVG (oder the one you usually use) and install it with pulled network cables to make things save

That's usually the first step that I do, before installing driver and other programms

You're welcome