Has anybody upgraded Lenovo Ideapad (Y-Series) to Win 8?

I have a Lenovo Ideapad Y570 (Windows 7, 64 bit, i7 Core). I also have a license key (and an installation disk) to upgrade this laptop computer to Win 8. I want to do this upgrade soon, but am not sure what will happen to the special Lenovo programs and functions which came pre-installed with the computer. The most important is OneKey Recovery which restores Windows either by running the OneKey Recovery program, or, if Windows cannot be started normally, by pressing the OneKey Recovery button instead of the Switch-On button. The OneKey Recovery System uses a special Service Partition on the hard drive to backup and recover the C partition. In effect, you don't need an installation disk to get out of any kind of trouble with Windows. The Y570 also has other special features such as the SlideNav program navigator, more of a gimmick to my mind. The question is, what happens when I upgrade Win 7 on this machine to Win 8 Pro? Will the OneKey Recovery system (including the button) still work? It's a long shot to ask this question on this forum. But perhaps there is a soul somewhere who has successfully (or unsuccessfully) tried to upgrade this kind of machine to Win 8? The Lenovo Y-Series includes the Y580, Y570, Y580 and the smaller Y460 etc range, all with at least OneKey Recovery as special feature. Any help available about this? I asked this question at the Lenovo forum but got nothing but silence, non-answers, in return. The Lenovo users simply don't know, it would seem.

You should visit the Lenovo forums for your laptop model;
IdeaPad Y, U, V, Z and P series Laptops - Lenovo Community

Might look at their Win8 compatibility list too if its still there somewhere.

The OneKey will do you no good as it would restore your factory or your custom image. You can rebuild it with your own win8 install image, but it takes some efforts and the Lenovo engineering dvd download and understanding how to use it. Its really simple but takes a certain procedure and a lot of time, that you can quickly waste that time if you don't understand the how to.

Its just an Image, I loaded it then said screw it after all the initial errors from the win8 install and simply enlarged that partition to 50gb and let the win8 (7backup) do a weekly backup and image into it. That regressed button restore is now useless but I can still image it simply with the win8upgrade.iso. Learn the RecIMG command and you'll probably be happy - but do keep an image on a remote drive somewhere.

You might want to find the image inside the Lenovo_Part and rename install.wim .. save it somewhere for some rainy day to let windows use it to reimage back to the factory original win7 and Lenovo crapola, or to the custom image if you did that when new. If you have resized any partitions, you've already broken that regressed factory reimage button. Seems everybody breaks it without knowing.

I keep all my data (documents, pictures, video's etc) on external hard drives. I also keep copies of the installation files for my programs (the installation files that normally reside in the "Downloads" folder) on external drives. Only the programs run from the C drive. So if there is a complete breakdown of Windows, I simply need to get Windows up and going again. The question is whether the Win 8 Upgrade disk I produced with the ISO supplied by Microsoft will boot the machine and repair or re-install Windows 8. If that is the case, OneKey Recovery is not necessary and can be forfeited. I noticed the other day that SlideNav seems to have been dropped by Lenovo. Its hardware crapola. I'll avoid computers with non-standard hardware features in future.

Sounds like if I were you.. I would go to win7 backup and let it make an image to another drive. Make a repair CD too so you can reinstall that image.

Install the win8 let it do the whole drive is best.. then after the install go to support.Lenovo.com for win8 drivers. I would shrink C and make myself a D partition with disk management. Then stick a win8 image there for quick reinstalls.

Its really simple.. just takes time for windows updates and reinstalling all the other programs. All the restarts after upgrades and program installs ... maybe are the worst parts of installing win8.

ecbritz said:

Any help available about this? I asked this question at the Lenovo forum but got nothing but silence, non-answers, in return. The Lenovo users simply don't know, it would seem.

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You can get some useful info, probably, by running the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant.