Reinstall Windows 7: Oem or Standard?
A Friend Has Asked Me to Repair His Toshiba Laptop After a Virus Crashed It. I've Managed to Do a Clean Re-Install Using the Built in Recovery Partition, but...
A friend has asked me to repair his Toshiba laptop after a virus crashed it. I've managed to do a clean re-install using the built in recovery partition, but the newly installed Windows is running absurdly slow. As in, it takes upwards of 30 minutes between logging in and the desktop actually showing, and once up doing anything has the same kind of wait periods. Booting up in safe mode seems to be working just fine, however.
I've done the re-install twice now and had the same problem both times. I've also noticed that the Toshiba install comes with a huge amount of bloatware and I'm worried that this is contributing to the issue. Even if its not, it definitely isn't helping things. Since I have his product key and a compatible Windows 7 install disc I've been debating whether to just use that instead.
My question is: is there any potential issue using a standard install disc instead of the built-in OEM version? I realize that I'd have to go find all of the drivers and manually install them this way, but that'd be a small price to pay if it actually works. And I wouldn't have to spend time going through and removing all the useless apps the OEM version adds in. So other than missing drivers, what problems could I run into?
(EDIT) I have used a linux live cd to check the hard disk and it is doing fine. I've tried removing some of the bloat while in safe mode, but half of the apps are could not be uninstalled due to errors/missing uninstaller/whatever. Starting up with a clean boot did not show any real difference in performance.
2 Answers
There are two possible gotchas and one thing to speed up re-installation.
Must Read
Windows product keys
The standard Windows 7 retail install disk will not work with an OEM product key. It will install, but when you attempt to activate it then it will fail.
This is because of a file in the install disk (called ei.cfg) which determines whether or not the disk is retail or OEM. You can "convert" a retail install disk to an OEM install disk (and vice versa) by modifying this file.
You can do this in the following way:
- Copy the contents of your Windows install disk to your computer
- Locate this file, it's in
sources\ei.cfg - Open it up in a text editor and look for the word
Retail. It'll be directly underneath the word[Channel] - Change
RetailtoOEM - Save the file and burn a new DVD
Sarah Jenkins is a veteran tech journalist with over 12 years of experience covering artificial intelligence, mobile innovations, and digital ethics. Her insights have appeared in leading technology publications worldwide.
