Downgrading to Win 7

[Scott_J]

I am trying to downgrade from windows 8 that came in my nice shiny new laptop... needless to say I want win 7 back.

So got my copy of win 7 and put the disk in and its complaining that the disk is being blocked by security settings, research has showed this to be the UEFI settings, I switched the bios over to legacy and windows 7 disk worked.

however when I go to install win 7 64 on the HDD it says it can not due to the disk being GPT format, research showed that this format only works with UEFI...

only solution I have found is to delete all partitions and format the entire drive.

while I dislike windows 8, I dont want to delete the OEM backup partitions in case I ever have to send the laptop back or I decide to sell it on and can sell it with windows 8 (damn M$ and not giving win disk or S/N)


is there any option to keep the backup partitions and run win 7, is there a way to install a security license for win 7 for UEFI? or would I need to make a disk image and re-load the image when (if) I want win 8 back.

 

[SchizTech]

When you say the disk is blocked by UEFI settings, what exactly do you mean? At what stage does the error occur and what is the message?

Windows 8 certified PCs come with the "secure boot" feature in the EFI; is there an option to disable secure boot? The only way you'll get a secure boot license for Windows 7 is is MS releases one, which I don't see them doing at this point.

 

[Scott_J]

I changed the boot sequance to boot from disk first, when it loads the disk it gives the message "ATAPI CDROM: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT51N has been blocked by the current security policy"

in the bios it gives me 2 options, legacy boot or UEFI, under it has the secure boot setting that I can not change, it only changes with the change of the boot mode.

what happend to the good old days where you put a disk in and hours later you got an OS....