Whenever I come accross a computer issue, I
find it helpful to share my experience with others. Recently I was going
through the process of downgrading Windows 8 to Windows 7. Now before you start
thinking of popping in your Windows 7 disk, you have to understand the critical
difference between the hard drive partition styles for both OS. Windows 8 uses
a GPT partition style and Windows 7 uses MBR style. If you don’t understand the differences, click here
In order to achieve installing your Windows 7 on your new
computer preloaded with Windows 8, follow the steps below.
1.
On your Win 8, go to Settings -> PC Settings –>
General –> Advance Startup and restart (this is to enter Windows 8 boot
option menu which can also be achieve by holding the shift key while restarting
or run the command line switch shutdown
/r /o)
2.
When you get to the UEFI BIOS page where you see
Choose an Option, go to Troubleshooting -> UEFI Firmware Settings
3.
When you get to the traditional BIOS screen,
you want to enable Legacy Boot which by default is disabled. You can now set
your Legacy Boot device priority from CD/DVD to Internal Drive etc.
After settings are saved and computer is restarting, your Windows
7 process should initiate. There’s one more step to be performed before the installation
can proceed. Remember out GPT vs MBR partition style mentioned above? We will
need to take care of that for the installation to proceed. When your
installation screen gets to the select drive to install windows page, you will
notice that you get an error that says windows cannot be installed on selected
drive. If you expand the error to view details, it reads “Windows cannot be
installed on this disk. The selected disk is of GPT Partition style”. What we
need to do next is bring the GPT partition to MBR partition. Here are the steps
to achieve that
1.
While on the select drive screen, hit SHIFT – F10.
This should bring up the console
2.
Type diskpart
3.
Once in diskpart, type:
a.
List disk (this should display all the disk available)
b.
Select disk n (where n is the disk you want to connect
to from the list)
c.
Convert mbr (this is usually quick. The result
will let you know if it was able to convert or not. If the command was not
successful then next step)
d.
Clean (this is takes a little longer than
convert but for a new computers, it shouldn’t take long)
e.
Quit.
4.
Continue with the installation process.
Taking the above steps should permit a clean install for
Windows 7. Please share, ask questions and post comments if you have any. If
you encountered any issues, it will be nice to share it with the public.
Thank you,
