DescentBB

I have a friend who has a virus and needs to reinstall Win7. Not sure he made a "recovery" disk.

If not.........?

The best option would be to find a Dell OEM Windows 7 install DVD (match the edition and 32 or 64 bit). Avoid downloading it off the internet or you will just end up with more malware preinstalled on the image (or buy a MSDN or Technet subscription and then you can download legit disk images directly from Microsoft). Note that retail disks usually reject OEM keys, so prioritize OEM disks. One option is by editing a few files in any Windows 7 DVD image you can change the resulting disk from Retail to OEM. It is also possible to delete one file from most disk images which will convert the resulting disk to a universal edition (still OEM or Retail), meaning it lets you pick which edition to install from Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate at the start of setup.

And if you use (or make) a generic OEM disk it is somewhat likely that Windows 7 will refuse to automatically activate over the internet and will run in 30 day trial mode till you do a phone activation (which takes 5 minutes to a toll free number).

Looks like this will do the trick. Just have to reinstall programs. He says he has no data to save.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... g_DFIR.htm

Thanks for the post.