Replacing hard drive

[JustFlippinMe]

I purchased an HP Pavilion Sleekbook 14 a few months ago. Of course it came with crappy Win 8. I finally got a new job and they REQUIRE Win 7. I can't use my old laptop with Win 7 because the headphone jack port and the USBs are all effed up, and I would need both of those for my headphones and foot pedal. That was the reason I purchased a new laptop to begin with - go figure it would cause an issue.

I looked into downgrading to Win 7, but since I do not have Windows 8 pro, it doesn't look like an option. I don't even have a CD Rom on this thing.

Would it be possible to take my hard drive that has Win 7 and put it in my Sleekbook that has Win 8? If so, do you foresee any problems?

Please help me. I was just hired yesterday and they want me working ASAP!!

 

[mjmacka]

It is not possible to do this without re-installing the operating system (Windows 7 or Windows 8).

 

[bdiddytampa]

Yeah transferring your harddrives wouldn't be an option, and downgrading is only possible with a reinstall. Do you have a disk for windows 7? If so you can go to wal mart or best buy or radio shack even and find a usb dvd drive to hook up and install your operating system fresh. If you don't have a win7 disk, you will have to buy one unfortunately :-( Now I haven't used windows 8, but I was under the impression that it was supposed to run everything that win 7 does... what sort of things are they requiring?

 

[mjmacka]

This is your best bet.
Buy a copy of Windows 7 Pro.


Back up the disk to ISO.
Use a tool like PenDriveLinux to make a bootable flash drive: http/www.pendrivelinux.com/
Install from flash drive.

OR

Buy an external DVD burner and install off of the external device.

 

[AM2A]

This is for some kind of transcription work from home?
pretty much anything that runs on windows 7 will run the same on windows 8. When they say "requires windows 7" they probably mean their stuff won't run properly on older versions of windows, unless you have clarified with them that you absolutely can't use 8 for some reason. If you have to / want to go back to win 7 follow what mjmacka said above

 

[mjmacka]

I've seen a few applications that don't like 8... some versions of Citrix (but receiver works fine) come to mind.

If your IT staff requires it, then they should provide it and install it themselves.

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Hey, BDiddy: The program I will be running is actually going to run using IE. It's called Scribe. It's a medical transcription platform. I'm not sure what the problem is - the recruiter simply said Win 8 is not compatible at this time. This is very frustrating! I don't have time to do all these things, and I really need to be working ASAP (I lost my main account for a huge ortho office back in the end of November...been using savings to supplement my income...not cool!). (phone....be back)

 

[mjmacka]

Ask the recruiter if you can install IE 10 on your Windows 7 machine (it's now a standard update). If he says "yes" then odds are it's compatible.

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Yeah, I was told Win 8 was not compatible at this time.

Is there a way to install Win 7 and not lose all my programs? Probably not, but thought I'd ask anyway. I'm trying to figure out how to save all my emails. I definitely need those if I have to reinstall Outlook.

Thank you all for your above responses. I really appreciate them!

 

[AM2A]

I've seen a few applications that don't like 8... some versions of Citrix (but receiver works fine) come to mind.

If your IT staff requires it, then they should provide it and install it themselves.

True, that's why I used "pretty much" as a qualifier, though maybe I could've worded it better.

Also, MS put out a windows 7 usb / dvd download tool, it makes it really easy to get the ISO onto a bootable flash drive.

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Oh, and MJMacka...I don't have a CD Rom on this laptop, so no sense in buying the Win 7 on disk. If I buy it online and download it, I assume it is okay to use a flash drive, right? Otherwise, there's absolutely no way to do this and I will be calling MS!!

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Oh, sorry, clearly I did not truly process your entire post. My apologies. Thanks!

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Okay, another funky question. Can I simply transfer my Win 8 with all the programs and such the way they are and transfer it all to the second partition...then go and install Win 7 on the main partition? This way I can pull anything from there to my main partition with Win 7...is that even an option. Seems like I did something like that many years ago, but it was with a desktop where I had two hard drives installed. TIA.

 

[JustFlippinMe]

So if the answer is no to my two above questions, I suppose what I must do is, suck it up, purchase and download Win 7, download the USB/Flash drive ISO thingy to convert the .ISO file to the flash drive, and begin a complete wipeout and reinstall using the flash drive? Is that right?

 

[AM2A]

you could create a second partition and install win 7 on that. I dual booted win 7 and win 8 before. If you still want to boot in windows 8, I'm guessing you'll have to fix the bootloader afterwards (shouldn't be difficult).

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Holy tech talk, AM2A. lol Not sure I understood that last part. I just looked and I already have a second partition that has the recovery for my windows 8. Do you think the recovery would still work if I transferred it to a flash drive to save for later use should I need it, hence freeing up that partition? Do you think I could then take the entire C partition drive, copy it to the D partition, then install Win 7 on the C partition? TIA.

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Oh, so you're saying I could work in Win 7 and if I want to do something on Win 8, I could just reboot, change which partition boots, and viola!...use Win 8?

 

[AM2A]

yeah, I'm thinking the easiest way to go about that would be to first shrink the windows 8 partition, then create a new partition for windows 7. install windows 7 on the new partition, and then restore windows 8 on the original partition. You'll have to make a restore disk/usb for windows 8.

edit: I should say recovery disk, not restore

 

[JustFlippinMe]

Awesome! Thanks so much! And thank you to all the others who responded as well.

 

[AM2A]

had a thought, there may be a minor complication. If the bootable usb does not work try the process outlined in the link below.

http/www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html