Problems reinstalling Win 7 Starter on netbook

I'm trying to reinstall Win 7 on my Samsung N250 Plus netbook, which came with Win 7 Starter. I deleted all the partitions except the "System" partition and the Samsung recovery partition. I used ei.cfg on the Win 7 Home x32 I downloaded (as suggested in other threads), and used the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to create a bootable USB installer for Win 7. It all installs fine, but (and I have tried this twice), it doesn't give me an option to select Win 7 Starter. It just installs Home Premium. I have checked the boot order in BIOS, and it is booting from the USB.

Any suggestions what I should do?

For background:
Some time ago I decided to experiment with Ubuntu to see if my netbook would work better with that than the Win 7 Starter it came with. To do so, I created a partition on which to install Ubuntu. Didn't make much difference and the computer got slower and slower so decided to try to restore it to factory settings. Ran the Samsung Recovery Solutions programme and it did what i assumed was a full restore, but then just got a black screen with flashing cursor. I now understand that the Ubuntu install would have overwritten the original MBR. Hence the need to reinstall Windows from USB.

I do have a licensed copy of Win 7 Pro but that is for my desktop PC. I have the product key for the netbook's copy of Win 7 starter on a label on the back of the case.

I only have a licence (and hence product key) for Starter. Sure Home Premium is nice but I don't have a licence for that.

There are several other threads on this forum indicating that Starter can be installed from USB by editing the ISO to remove restrictions. I've followed those instructions but they are not working for me.

I hadn't seen that particular article, but those are the same steps I followed. Still can't get it to give me option to select a Windows edition.

   Information

We always assume you have made your Recovery Disks using the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Media Creator app the first day you had your new PC.
& made the Startup Repair CD.
startup repair disc-create

Did you make the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disks?

How to use Samsung Recovery, make Recovery disks:
Samsung PC Software - Samsung Support Center - YouTube

NP-R519 - OVERVIEW | SUPPORT | SAMSUNG UK
http://www.samsungpc.com/top_faq/13_...merecovery.htm

How to Order Recovery disc.
Support - Laptops NP700Z7CH | Samsung PCs

No I didn't make recovery disks and it is not possible to obtain them from Samsung, as far as I can see.

Vertex said:

Do you still have a Windows 7 ISO?

I found this article that seems to provide a more in-depth way to remove ei.cfg file that would then reveal all editions of Windows 7 on the installation:

Where can I download the Windows 7 starter ISO? - Microsoft Community

I do still have the ISO I downloaded from digitalriver. The link you have given suggests I should be using an ISO for Win 7 Ultimate. I was following the same routine suggested in your link, but with Home Premium, which according to other links should work, but doesn't. I'll give it a try with Ultimate, once it has finished downloading.

derekimo said:

Sometimes that eicfg tool doesn't work, you can unpack the ISO with 7-zip or WinRAR and delete

The ei.cfg from the sources folder, then recreate the ISO with Imgburn,

Following these guidelines for a perfect reinstall will help.

Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Again this seems to be same the same thing. i.e. this is what I did with the following exceptions:
I used 7-zip to open the ISO through Win Explorer. Then I checked that ei.cfg had been deleted. There was no sign of it in the Sources folder. So I didn't need to unpack and recreate the ISO. The link to the tutorial is to my knowledge more or less what I did, the only difference being that I didn't have any data or software installations to save so I simply wiped the drive on the netbook and reformatted it after deleting most of the partitions.

What I didn't delete was the Samsung recovery partition. Should I delete that? It doesn't work in terms of restoring Windows, but I didn'tknow if it served any purpose for obtaining drivers etc.