Try doing a reinstall over your present win 7 install. You should now be able to get the OS to accept your upgrade licence key.
My inspiron 1520 wont boot. I tried to restore from a disk image (trueimage) but none worked. I dont have a restore cd so I tried F8 to restore form the hidden partition. Unfortunately there were no restore points or system images. I think this may be because the laptop was supplied with vista and I've subsequently upgraded to windows 7. I can install windows 7 but it wont accept my licence key because its an upgrade and doesnt have a vista os to build on. In 30 days win7 will expire. As my hidden restore partition doesn't seem to work will Dell sell me a restore cd?
cant restore inspiron 1520