Belarc Advisor only gives you the product key from the registry which for a Dell OEM install will be a SLP key. This will be different from the key on the COA and cannot be manually activated by inputting it during installation. The key on the COA can be input during installation and this activation requires a call to Microsoft. The SLP key/OEM activation can be applied to a retail install without a product key by use of the ABR program and cert files which I backed up from installs with the Dell Reinstallation DVD: [URL] Although Windows views and begins to install on the hard drive, it might be a hiccup art the end with the hard drive and loading SATA drivers may still fix this issue.
I need to do a ground up Windows 7 re-install from the provided Win7 re-installation media, due to hard drive failure (thus no recovery partition available).  Machine is an XPS 9000 (circa 2010).   Phase one (partitioning, file copy and extraction) works fine.  However, when I reboot into Windows for the first time from the hard disk I get a message that Windows installer could not configure Windows for my hardware.  The only option is to acknowledge and reboot (which gives the same message).  Subsequent reboots just say that the Windows installation could not be completed, and to reboot to install Windows. Any clues about this?  I don't have any new hardware in the machine that would be incompatible with this (admittedly old, and likely non-SP1) re-install disk.  I'm wondering if the disk is actually missing some support that they put into the factory install image.  My next step is to get a dutch Win 7 install disk (likely with SP1) to see if that works.  Any other thoughts?
Re-install of Windows 7 from Dell re-installation DVD fails with "Can't 
configure Windows for your hardware"