Make a clean install of Win7 on a Win 8.1 laptop.

I bought my wife a new VAIO Sony laptop. It came with Win8 installed. She has been using a Toshiba laptop with Win7.
She wants no part of Win8. (She is 84 years old) & spends a lot of time on her laptop.

I want to put Win7 on the Sony VAIO. I don't want to save anything on it.
I want to make a Clean install by reformatting the HD.
However, I know you can not completely reformat the HD because of the "System Reserved" partition.

Does anyone have information on how to do a factory reformat?

Tully

Tully said:

I bought my wife a new VAIO Sony laptop. It came with Win8 installed. She has been using a Toshiba laptop with Win7.
She wants no part of Win8. (She is 84 years old) & spends a lot of time on her laptop.

I want to put Win7 on the Sony VAIO. I don't want to save anything on it.
I want to make a Clean install by reformatting the HD.
However, I know you can not completely reformat the HD because of the "System Reserved" partition.

Does anyone have information on how to do a factory reformat?

Tully

Click to expand...

If you do Factory Reformat, you will be back to Windows 8.

Downgrade to Windows 7.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/13326-downgrade-windows-8-windows-7-a.html
Warning you must have the UEFI/BIOS firmware setting in Step Three set.

Make sure you read the NOTE at Step three.

You will need to buy Windows 7.

You can setup Windows 8 so it looks and behaves like Windows 7 by installing Classic Shell. It will give you a Start button, boot directly to the Desktop and has settings that will disable all hot corners so you have to work at getting to the Metro desktop.

I think this is a better option that going back to Windows 7.

You can delete the system reserved partition during a clean install. I've switched my desktop back and forth between 7 and different versions of 8 several times. I delete the system reserved and OS partition. The system reserved will be recreated automatically during the install process by the OS you are installing. Your real issue's are going to be UEFI and secure boot. As Theog posted above, you'll likely have to change some BIOS settings. My desktop PC doesn't have UEFI so its a non issue for me.

If you already have 8.1 on it, have you considered just setting it up to bypass all the Metro stuff? Not that hard to do, and most of it you can do by right clicking on the Desktop task bar, and using the check boxes in the Navigation tab. See the article at the link below:

Metro Haters Guide to 8.1