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So, recently my motherboard up and died on me for what ever reason. I have now bought and replaced the motherboard, and the CPU while i was at it.
The issue being windows can no longer load due to only having the drivers for the old motherboard. At least that's how i understand it from a bit if google searching. the system is originally a pre-built deal, so I don't own a disk/license.

My question is this. Is there any way for me to acquire Windows 7 again and get a new key legally, without simply buying it again? Since technically it's still the same system it was bought for.. or.. something. yeah.

Yes. You just have to call Microsoft support and let them know that you replaced a failed motherboard and they'll give you a new activation key. It's really pretty painless, just kinda time-consuming.

Ah, okay, that doesn't seem bad at all. Thanks!

How about the lack of any kind of installation disk? do i have to get a download somewhere, and burn that onto a disk to boot from?

My first suggestion is to see if you can get it booted into Safe Mode long enough to get the drivers. Theoretically you were supposed to have burned a recovery disk before your computer failed. You can get someone else to burn one if you have to.

It wont boot into safe mode at all. select it, it begins to load then errors out and restarts. error 0X0000007B, missing bootdrive.

Huh. That's a new one to me. Well, see if you can find someone else with Win7 that can make you a recovery disk.

I have another, probably stupid, question. Do you require a working version of the previous windows if you were to upgrade to Windows 8. I have a friend who has a spare Windows 8 upgrade thing. is it at all possible to just use that disk to do a clean install of 8, although my windows 7 is broken..

I'm pretty computer illiterate, if you hadn't guessed >_>

No, the upgrade check will be able to see it's on the hard drive, even if it can't boot.

That's perfect then, assuming windows 8 isnt awful? Not heard much about it myself

It's... messy. It has some advantages over 7 but the experience changes so much that you'll get REALLY annoyed about it until you get used to it, at which point it's still an inferior experience to Win7 but you can deal with it.

As long as you can get rid of the stupid touch/panel home screen thing and just have a regular desktop I think I world be okay.

So if I went and did the update, rather than a clean install I could also save all my data?

You can't get rid of the touch panel home screen. You can set the default UI back to desktop mode, but you still get the home screen instead of the start menu.

Yeah, that's what I meant. As long as I can have desktop mode most the time ill be happy

Just use the same key you used before.