Re-installing Genuine Windows 7HP on a dual boot laptop

vcsekhar · 26 Nov 2013

Hi,
This is Chandrasekhar, i joined this forum seeking help on how to revert back to Windows 7 Home Premium.
my laptop (Acer Aspire 5745G) originally has genuine Win 7 HP (no media available) and was recently loaded to dual boot with windows server 2003 (for learning and practicing SAP developer) and Windows 7 Ultimate. The Win 7 Ultimate was a counterfeit license, which i do not want. i want to revert back to my original-genuine Win 7 HP. Even i am getting the alerts/notices from MS that i am using counterfeit License.

can anyone help me with step-by-step process to re-install my Win 7 HP genuine license without disturbing the Win 2003 server installation as i paid highly to a third party for its installation.

thanks in advance for taking time to help me.

regards
Chandrasekhar

Tews · 26 Nov 2013

See if this works for you ...

1. Power on the computer
2. At the white ACER BIOS screen, hold the Alt key and press the F10 key simultaneously to start Acer eRecovery.
3. Once eRecovery has loaded, click Restore to Factory Default Settings
4. Click OK to continue
5. From here, the eRecovery process will update all the data on the C: drive and restore a fully functional factory image (approximately 10 minutes).
6. Once eRecovery has run, press OK to reboot unit

Note that all data will be lost during this process and your computer will be brought back to it's original factory state and settings.

Mark Phelps · 26 Nov 2013

Machines behave differently, but every time I have restored an HP to its original setup, it erased the contents of the hard drive, reformatted the drive, and reloaded from scratch.

If yours works this way, doing a restore from HP recovery is not going to

re-install my Win 7 HP genuine license without disturbing the Win 2003 server installation

If you were able to obtain W\HP Win7 Restore media from HP, you might be able to use that to do an in-place reinstall of Win7, replacing the Win7 Ultimate with Win7 HP.

gregrocker · 26 Nov 2013

Everything needed is here to get and keep a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
including the latest official installer for your licensed version and tool to burn it to DVD or flash stick.

To preserve Server 2003 then during booted Custom install delete the 100mb System REserved partition (if you have it) and Windows 7 partition using the Drive Options shown in Steps 7 and 8 of Clean Install Windows 7. Create a New partition in the space allowing it to include another System Reserved partition if it requests it.

This should both reinstall Win7 and configure a Dual Boot with Server 2003.

If you have not carefully partitioned your HD to add the Server partition then it may have already converted to Dynamic since you can only have four Primary partitions or three Primary and unlimited Logical. So if you're in doubt I would post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image so we can look it over and make suggestions or help you reconvert to Basic if necessary. A Dynamic disk is only meant to span a partition across multiple HD's.

You can also decide if you want to keep the HP Recovery partition which may no longer run after reinstall. It is only valuable for the Minimal Recovery option it might offer on the more recent models since otherwise it will reinstall all of the HP bloatware which cripples Win7 and is the worst in the industry with HP's. So you might want to test running it to see if it will queue up because if not I would also delete it during the reinstall. HP System Recovery