where can i download windows 7 professional 64 bit?

Hello,

Since early April, I've been battling some malware. Thanks to the efforts of the great people on this forum, looks like the main culprit of ads playing in the background is no longer present. They indicated my system was clean of the infection, but my system is still acting strange. They indicated I should ask for help with windows. My case is here.

For one thing, windows isn't allowing me to install updates anymore. My system seems to shutdown occasionally, and the fact is, I just don't trust it anymore. I'm thinking the best thing to do is just wipe and start over.

Unfortunately, I can't find my installation disks. I have searched the web for legal downloads (as I still have my product key), but can't seem to find a working site. This microsoft affiliated digital river site I keep seeing in search results threads doesn't seem to be working, and I'm concerned about accidently downloading an infected or altered version.

Does anyone know where I can find a windows 7 professional 64 bit?

Also, if anyone can give me instructions as to how to wipe and reformat my hard drive, I'd appreciate it. It's been many years. I used to use fdisk, but that's on floppy and of course, no more floppy drives. Is that what is still the program of choice? What's a safe software to download to a cd or flash?

Thanks for your time.

 

Here you go -

http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/14-windows-7-direct-download-links

x17-59186.iso is probably best as it contains SP1

I've edited that so you get the English rather than Chinese version

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/minitool_partition_wizard_home_edition.html

 

In line with Earthling's suggestion of MiniTool, you can download the bootable CD ISO directly from MiniTool (the download link is near the bottom of the page).

Burn the ISO to CD, boot from it and go from there.

 

Thanks mdonah - that's what I should have recommended. Too much rushing about today

 

thanks for the info... but I have a question...
do I have to make 2 cds? One the bootable partition thing and a burn a second, dvd, for the windows image?

 

and I guess I am confused...

I have a cd with the bootable image, and it looks like I have my cd setup to be the first thing looked at when I startup, but my computer isn't booting up from the bootable disk..it keeps trying to run normally, which doesn't work as my computer never reaches the desktop.

I get the windows splash screen and then just hang on a black screen forever.

I didn't use to be a computer idiot, but I have apparently gone senile overnight, lol.

What I've done so far...

1. created CD with MiniTool® Partition Wizard Bootable CD...used windows explorer to drag iso image to CD... this CD doesn't seem to make computer boot to it.

2. I press F8 to go to boot menu and select the CD drive (which I've also done in setup), but when I do..i keep getting a windows error recovery screen (from the fact that I can't get windows to boot to desktop).

What am I doing wrong? It seems like my machine will not let me do anything because it is offended windows did not work properly and only gives me the option to try to fix the error (never works) or boot normally (gets hung up on black screen).

PS - I also have a second disk, a dvd, that I've burned the windows 7 image too, i'm not sure whether that should be on same disc as bootable disc image.

At this point nothing is working Does the bootable image have a cd driver? I'm about ready to drop-kick this machine, lol.

 

You need something like this, http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/isoburn.html. This will burn an ISO image and make a bootable CD or DVD.

 

Just to amplify what Novice said, ISOs have to be burned 'as iso' rather than simply copied to disc as you have done by dragging it in Explorer. That makes it bootable.

 

As Earthling and Novice have stated, you can't just copy an ISO to CD or DVD and expect to be able to boot from it. You have to use a CD/DVD burning application like Novice suggests to burn the ISO image. Once it's burned, you'll then be able to boot from it. You have the boot order correct.

On the opening screen of MiniTool, select the first option (boot to Partition Wizard). Select each partition individually by clicking on it and choose Delete partition on the left. Then click Apply at the top and confirm. Since you're doing a clean install of Windows 7, you want to end up with one contiguous block of unallocated space that Windows Setup can format and then install Windows to. You did burn the ISO for Windows 7 to DVD didn't you?

During installation, don't put the product key in. At the screen that asks which version you want to install, select Windows 7 Professional and confirm your choice. After installation is complete, go to Windows Activation and then put in YOUR product Key and Windows should activate online. If for some reason it doesn't, you'll have to activate by phone.

The reason I'm suggesting you do it this way is because the ISO you downloaded is a Retail version of Windows and the Product Key you have is more than likely OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) for the brand of computer you have. It will activate because it's a legitimate key but, for some reason OEM keys have presented problems if used during installation (unless the DVD you can't find is an OEM DVD) and people have had to go in again and change product keys.

 

thanks for the info. I have never felt like I was basic tech challenged, but this last month has tested me. I am so frustrated.

I created one primary partition last night and started the windows install. It got through to the part where it needed to restart for the 1st time and then the problems started. I was unclear as to whether I needed to be booting from the cd at that point, or let it boot from the hard drive. When I'm installing windows, should I return the boot order to hard drive 1st and then use f8 to select the cd/dvd drive that first time to start the installation? And after that, should I let the computer boot up from the hard drive as it tries to finish installing?

My computer, even when it was working right, had some issues where the mouse (every time) and keyboard (occasionally) were not seen by my machine. I always have to unplug my mouse and put it back in to get my machine to see it. So, when my machine booted back up after the 1st part of installation, it said press any key to boot from cd and of course, my machine decided not to recognize a keyboard so I had no choice but to reset. when it restarted, it wanted to start over.

So, I formatted the partition again, and, since it hasn't been challenging enough, lol, when I tried to install windows again, it says "windows cannot be installed to this disk. the selected disk has an mbr partition table. On EFI systems, windows can only be installed to gpt disks.

I am clueless as to why it says that today when I created partition the same way I did yesterday. The only thing I did differently was let minitool write zeros to truly blank everything, but that took a couple hours.

Anyway, I apologize for being such a problem, but I am really lost. I guess I need my hand held and given specific instructions for every part of this process.

 

Perhaps this link will help, http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03445889&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en. Think that it covers your issue.

 

Let's deal with the easy bits first. During installation do not interfere at all. Just let it take its own course through the reboots. As to the keyboard/mouse problem you really need a PS/2 wired mouse and keyboard at this stage. It is totally frustrating to suddenly find USB isn't working when you really need it. I'm on a brand new high spec custom built system here but I made sure it had PS/2 ports, and I use them.

Happily, Novice posted while I was typing so let's hope that gets around the UEFI problem. Don't be surprised if it's not F10 and the other BIOS options differ too as the guidance is HP specific. If your system is not HP you will have to adapt the guidance to your own situation or tell us exactly what system you are using.