Windows 7: Re-installing 7 Professional on Asus Eee PC Netbook

I bought me Eee PC with Windows 7 Starter Edition and immediately had a friend of mine upgrade it to 7 Pro. The problem is, I don't have a disc drive, but he downloaded the install file from his school's website (they give free copies to their students with extra licenses). He had to create a partition on my C drive to put the install files so they would install on the original partition of the C drive.

Now, I have a problem. I need to reformat my PC and I don't want to be stuck with 7 Starter. I'm wondering how I would go about doing this. The install files should be on the partition still (labeled WIN7INSTALL) but I can't view the files. Also, I have no idea how to reformat a computer (I'm not too experienced with this kind of thing).

Is it possible to reformat the portion of the drive that doesn't contain the install files so that the install files will still remain? I lost the original 7 Pro install program, so I need the install files that were extracted to that partition we created to store them, but I'm afraid if I format the drive, I will lose them.

So, my questions are:



1) How do I do reformat my PC?
2) How do I NOT reformat the partition that contain the extracted 7 Pro install files?
3) If it's possible to do (1) and (2), how do I access these install files so I can run them?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if there are any other steps to this process that I'm not considering, please let me know. Thanks in advance.

Try a look here.

USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

Thanks for the link, but I don't think that will work in my case. For one, I don't have a USB drive large enough to hold all the files, but more importantly, all the install files are on a partition of my C drive and I don't know how to access them, so I don't know how I'd move them to the USB drive.

I know that with the way it's set up right now, I don't need to do the USB thing. When we first installed 7 Pro, we considered doing the install via USB, but decided to just create a partition to store the install files and boot from. I know it can be done that way again, but I just need 1) to know how to access the files on the partition with the install files, and 2) remove 7 Pro from my system so I can reinstall it via the files on the install partition.

In other words, I just need to know how to remove 7 Pro without losing the install files that are on my C drive so that I can use them to reinstall Windows.

Again, thanks for the link, but I don't think that's going to help me in this case.

Please post back a screenshot of your full Disk Management drive map, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu and attaching file using paper clip in Reply Box.

Next unhide Hidden and System files in Control Panel>Folder Options>View, then click on Start>Computer and post screenshots of each of your lettered drives' contents.

Be aware that if you again run your install files from a partition or Windows 7 that you will not be able to format your HD first, just overwrite Windows 7. This is not as clean an install as you get by booting the installer to do a Custom install using Drive Tools to delete all, create New, and format partitions.

Take a look at this:
Windows Anytime Upgrade - Windows 7 - Microsoft Windows

No install files needed.

All you need is your KEY.

There might be no point in me doing that because I have to do a clean install. I've been infected with the Aleuron Rootkit and need to get rid of it, but I can't find any way to remove it except for formatting.

Will that do a clean install, or just over-write my current version of Windows?

A clean install will overwrite your current version; an Anytime won't.

Encyclopedia entry: Virus:Win32/Alureon.A - Learn more about malware - Microsoft Malware Protection Center

Run the MS Windows Malicous Software Removal Tool.

^ I've ran it 4 times. Nothing.

EDIT - I see they've recently updated that program. How do I get it and run it and will it remove the Rootkit?

Jonathan_King: Well then yeah, I need to do a clean install.

OP has Windows 7 Starter Recovery partition.

Anytime upgrade will get OP back to Win 7 Pro.