Mmmm you’re talking about key resellers. A full retail version costs $150. Keys from key resellers are notoriously unreliable. It might work forever, or it might stop working a week after you authenticated. It’s more or less a gamble.
Great if it works for you, sucks if someone just wasted money (however little) on something that’ll stop working - especially if it’s grandma’s machine.
Also, hedge your bets a little better, buy the ones that cost $10 or even $15. Historically speaking those are a safer bet.
Except if the malware has already infected the recovery partition or completely removed it. Personally I'd take no chances and just nuke the HDD and perform a fresh install.
Considering it’s a laptop with a working Windows, it probably already has a licence for the hardware. Just download from Microsoft, wipe disk and install it and see if it works.
Safest image download would be from Microsoft website. You need activation? Look up Microsoft Activation Script (MAS) on Github. Read the readme on how to use it.
NGL I’m so tired right now I thought you were serious about there being a “Windows Debian Edition”
I even googled it lol
I do agree though that if your mum only uses the PC for like day to day browsing she’ll never notice a difference if you put a Windows style skin on your preferred Linux distro. Hell she might notice it being faster all around to be honest.
Use the official Microsoft tool that makes installation media. From there, you can leave it unactivated, purchase a key, or use MAS or whatever it’s called to activate for free
If the laptop came preinstalled with Windows you can likely reinstall the same version (Home or Pro) by using the utility from Microsoft to build a bootable USB drive, and it will auto-activate.
No need to pirate anything, you already have a license.
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