Windows 7 OEM and Restore to factory settings problem

[slovas]

Hi all,

3 years ago I bought Gateway laptop with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM installed.
A week ago my hard disk started to work with no stop, I guess I caught a virus or something. I decided to reinstall the system. I started with 'Restore your computer to factory settings'.
Everything started well, language selection, partition choosing etc. However, the process stucked on 82% for next 2 hours and then reported an error - something like can't load a language file.
I tried it 2 times more but the same happened.
I decided to install a windows from cd and i did it, but i don't have an serial number and i don't know how to activate it. Is there any way for me to do it? Find a serial in recovery partition or any other way?
Thanks

 

[TrainableMan]

Before your computer went bad it would have been possible to extract the product key from the registry but now pretty much your only hope is the sticker normally located on the back or bottom of your computer.

There is also a possibility your laptop uses SLIC technology and a preactivated key, in which case the product key for Win 7 Pro for ACER/GATEWAY/PACKARD would be YKHFT-KW986-GK4PY-FDWYH-7TP9F. Source.

You can always check with Gateway support to see if they can help. At the very least they may offer to sell you a new license.