You state you had windows 8 installed on your laptop, so I presume you formatted the partition of the hard drive that contained the windows 8 install on it.
1. First of all enter the bios of the laptop and verify if it us Uefi capable.
Also check to see the status of secure boot if the option exists in the bios.
For windows 7 disable secure boot.
You may also see a bios page that details with security keys related to Secure boot.
Either delete the current entries in all of the sections that have a security key installed, or choose the clear option selection in the bios.
2. The next thing you need to do is look at the bios page that deals with the Sata ports of the laptop that your hard disk drive, and optical drive will be connected to if the laptop has an optical drive DVD R/ RW or a Blu ray optical drive.
If the mode for the Sata ports is set to Sata, change it to Ahci mode, or IDE mode.
If you do not have the option to change the mode from Sata to Ahci mode, and were provided with a driver Dvd that came with the laptop You need to dig it out.
Make sure the first boot able device in your boot order list of the bios settings of the laptop is set to the DVD drive if using a DVD install disk of windows 7, or if using a boot able flash drive.
Save all of the changes made before you exit the bios of the laptop.
Restart the system, and let the windows 7 setup and install run from either the dvd disk put in the optical drive or via a usb flash drive connected to the laptops usb port, or ports.
Now if you left the Sata interface set at Sata mode in the bios.
When you get to the page where windows asks you where you want to install the windows setup to IE: Partition C:
If you look to the bottom left of that window in blue writing you should see Add driver.
Insert the DVD driver disk that might of come with the laptop.
or search through the other partitions of the drive such as partition D: or E: for a drivers folder.
Navigate to the Sata driver folder, and click on it.
A file should show, select it then click ok.
The main window where you are asked what drive or partition to install windows will refresh.
Select the drive or partition that you wish windows 7 to be installed to.
Then click next.
If you set the mode in the bios to Ahci mode then you do not need to perform the action above.
Simply click next after selecting what drive or partition of the drive you wish windows 7 to be installed to.
The reason why the windows 7 install, and halts is down to the fact that if the Sata interface mode is set to Sata.
You have to pre load the sata driver before cliking on next when installing windows.
Or during the windows install the drive you selected tries to use Sata mode to access the hard disk drive.
Sorry for the long post Viper, but I laid it out step by step in order to get windows 7 installed on the laptop.
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