free windows 7 is legal or not?

[andre#4]

Forgive me for my question I have read for 2 hours so far can make neither heads nor tails.

I found a link for a guide through this forum. Official windows 7 repository, on mydigitallife.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... Repository


It shows how to get windows 7 free. Is this legal?

I thought of doing it a different way, getting the iso from digital river first, then using the ideas from the mydigitallife guide.

i have been reading of the middleton bios which has SLIC table. Does this mean you can put any windows 7 into any machine with middleton, or another slic bios, and avoid the need to buy a license key? Are there any limitations, ie you have to use a oem version of windows 7? (god this has gotten so complicated)

And this is all above board?

Not that I care per se, microsoft probably has enough money already, I just want to know what I am doing before I do it.

If this is indeed illegal, what is the best legal way to get windows 7 onto a t60 or t61? (I have seen on ebay people selling dell windows 7 discs with dell motherboards and coa stickers for $60 and up)

I don't even want windows 7. I am an xp man. but I am making a 64bit machine and have heard mostly bad things about vista. I have also wondered why people don't use 64bit xp? I suppose that is question for another day.

Thanks so much for all help I love this forum and love thinkpads especially with the majic 3 letters IBM!!!

[Khipata]

Sorry to tell you this but it is ILLEGAL
But hey, if we (on this forum) are technologically advanced enough to obtain, restore, upgrade, admire and actually USE used Thinkpads, let us be honest to each other: we've all been there, done that at some point...
For the same honesty's sake, I can not think that Windows' price tag will be justified on machines costing 2 or 3 times less that OS itself... So this is debatable moral question: should you or should you not install such a copy of Windows.... It is much like downloading movies as torrents, or reading PDF versions of retail books, or borrowing a PC game from a friend or... or... or... So as I said, IT IS ILLEGAL but there is no force on this planet which will stop you from successfully doing just that Personally, my opinion is, IF you can afford, you should ABSOLUTELY purchase legal copy, but if you can not, well... People get away with murders every day as sad as this is, so I do not think a lousy copy of OS will break Microsoft nor I consider it a CRIME per se ...
I believe I answered your question ...

[andre#4]

Well yes, this is a 8 year old computer. I want to somehow get a 64bit OS on here. Also, I paid for the XP and Microsoft has stopped supporting it even though it is the best windows OS in the world and x billions of people still use it. And I am not trying to get windows 10 or 8.1 or 8. Just the outdated 7 which will ultimately be unsupported by mircosoft.


Anyway, if I have middleton bios, can I put in any old windows 7 disk and it will bypass the authentication section? And it won't become unactivated, or whatever after 30 days?

[RealBlackStuff]

To work on Lenovo machines, you'll need Lenovo Recovery disks for Vista or W7, plus Slic-tables in your BIOS, to get automatic activation.
An official 'bare' Vista or W7 download (like from DigitalRiver) still requires a COA-key to get activated.
The guys at MDL and other forums are very good at stuffing these Slic-tables into the BIOS of most any laptop/PC.
'Nuff said.

[Medessec]

Indeed- the link posted in OP is not really condoned by MS.

But as hinted at by RBS, this is far from the easiest way of getting a good, clean Windows Vista/7 install on your Thinkpad. Your best bet is Lenovo recovery disks, which can still cost you... but just post a WTB ad in the Marketplace forum, shouldn't be long before someone pokes up with a spare.


Vista's not half bad despite what everyone says, but Windows 7 has more features and is overall nicer, so it would be preferable to have that. Really depends on the Thinkpad in question.

[ajkula66]

I believe that there are two different issues here...

Legality of the download in question is a tricky one, but with that said, as long as one has a proper key/COA for the OS that they're installing, they can use pretty much any matching media they deem fit. Now, if they don't...that's a whole another can of worms.

FTR: I've used the link above to download and install a fresh copy of W7 64 Pro on my T410 which does have a COA for it. It refused to accept the characters, but a simple call to MS' automated activation system solved the problem.

Obviously, YMMV.

[GomJabbar]

I suggest downloading from Digital River.

http://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to- ... a-legally/

http://www.w7forums.com/threads/officia ... ost-124821

[axur-delmeria]

The method outlined in the linked article is "normal" until Step 4, where it advocates outright piracy through the use of a "loader".

Later sections give more details regarding OEM activation, which is fine for education purposes... then circumvention methods are discussed.

As ajkula66 said:

as long as one has a proper key/COA for the OS that they're installing, they can use pretty much any matching media they deem fit.

In my line of work, I've used retail Windows 7 discs to reinstall the OS on laptops whose original hard drives had malfunctioned and were replaced. In those cases, the recovery discs were either unavailable or were defective.

In one recent case, it was the service center that made the mistake, using a 64-bit Win 7 restore disc on an Atom N2800 netbook, but Intel only has beta 64-bit drivers for the GMA 3650 integrated graphics.
The COA sticker was even labeled "Win 7 Home Basic 32-bit" for crying out loud. I dunno what the techs were thinking.

[jronald]

You have not mentioned what your laptop is. That said, if your laptop came optionally with 7, the easiest fasted simplest way to do what you want to do, is locate a set of System Restore discs.

Drop them in, let them do there thing, and your good to go.

I know for a fact that the T60 Vista discs work on several other models, as an experiment I tried it. Did not really seem to matter what I tried them on, they loaded fine. I dont personally know if the Lenovo 7's will because trying this is pretty time consuming way to figure it out.

YMMV
Ron

[joester]

I'll toss in my $0.02.

I had a W7 COA from a different laptop, and a T60P (the one I'm currently using) with no HDD.
Added the HDD, and downloaded the W7 install ISO that matched the sticker. (W7 Home)
Installed the OS, activated online, and installed the appropriate drivers from Lenovo.

Seems to be working great.

Joe