Windows 7 won't boot after reinstalling over Windows 8

Hi all,

So, I recently bought my granddad a new laptop, however it came with Windows 8, which he is not familar with. So I decided that I would buy it and simply reinstall Windows 7 over the top again. Surprisingly I simply ran the setup from inside Windows 8 and it seemed to work fine to downgrade. The installation process completed successfully as far as I can see however, when it booted up again it simply stuck on the registry settings boot screen. After a while it then rebooted and started up again but this time froze on the starting windows normal boot screen. I left it for a while to see what happened and it just rebooted after a while again and simply did the same thing. I cannot get it to boot into safe mode either. Could this be something to do with the CPU being AMD? I don't know if Windows fully supports AMD cpu's as I have only used Intel in the past. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

How to Downgrade to Windows 7.
Downgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7

I can't use this tutorial though as I cannot access any operating system!

EDIT: Never mind - thought I needed to use PoweShell for something else :P

The tutorial you posted tells me to disable secure boot, however, I cannot select this option in the BIOS it simply skips over the option.

EDIT: Setting the supervisor password in the BIOS fixed :)

What Make & Model of PC do you have?

Packard Bell Easy Note TE. Also, changing the secure boot mode didn't make it boot and I can't seem to find the boot options menu button so I cannot simply reinstall as the Windows 7 installer is on a flash drive.

Downgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7

You to do step 3 first.

theog said:

3) Reset BIOS to default, and reboot to BIOS make sure Secure Boot is disabled.
Make sure CSM is ENABLED, & set to UEFI boot.
NOTE: Check your manufacturer's uEFI BIOS manual for settings.

If you have done all of Step Three, to boot the Windows 7 DVD use the one time boot menu.
Check your manufacturer's uEFI BIOS manual for settings.



Boot the DVD in uEFI mode.

Finally, looks like it might be booting from the CD (hopefully!). Hopefully I won't have any compatibility issues as my disc is actually meant for Dell machines :P

Looks like it is still stuck on the bootscreen even when I boot from the disk. I think it may be because I have seen 2 settings for secure boot, but I can only change one of them. I will edit if it unfreezes.

jamerst said:

Finally, looks like it might be booting from the CD (hopefully!). Hopefully I won't have any compatibility issues as my disc is actually meant for Dell machines :P

You can not use a OEM manufacturer's DVD & product key, that would be a illegal install.

You may like to get a DVD & license key from a good source like:
Windows Download and Shop - Microsoft Windows