Reinstalling Windows and Office is one of the most common tasks every user must perform. Unfortunately, access to physical copies is increasingly limited, especially with OEM licenses. Microsoft offers several ways to obtain an ISO image of the desired product, but the process is inconvenient and doesn't always work. The Adguard portal reduces image downloads to a couple of clicks, straight from the official servers.
Last week I got my hands on a Dell computer with an original Windows 7 Home Premium license. I tried to download an ISO image through Microsoft's official portal, but when I entered the product key, it simply told me to go to the manufacturer's page and get the recovery disks there. Needless to say, Microsoft's attitude stinks.
At the end of the day, it was the network of networks and other users in the same situation that led me to a compatible ISO image, and the computer returned to its owner without incident. Redmond says that, due to drivers and other special functions, it cannot provide Windows for those computers, but sometimes we only want a clean ISO image and work from it.
Downloading Windows images
The Adguard portal removes those hurdles and offers, through a simple interface, download links for all the major versions of Windows (whether final releases or builds from the Insider program) and Microsoft Office. Adguard lets us select the exact version of Windows, the edition compatible with our license, the language, and finally the architecture (32 or 64 bits). On the Office side we find Office 2007 (whose extended support ends in October), Office 2010, Office 2011 for Mac, Office 2013 and Office 2016. As expected, Adguard does not have downloads for Enterprise or LTSB images.
The best part of Adguard is that it does not qualify as piracy. Without an appropriate license, ISO images are merely trial versions. Microsoft should simplify access to this content even more, especially in cases of obscure editions like Windows 7 Starter. The fact that Adguard works in the browser removes any dependency, and the rest is writing the ISO image to a USB stick with enough space.
