Formatted Win 8 Laptop & Installed Win 7. Need Drivers.  

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  1. Posts : 11,408
    ME/XP/Vista/Win7
       #11

    It is all about doing your homework.



    My OEM test rig,Windows 8 specs:




    OEM said:
    OS Provided Windows 8 Pro 64-bit Edition Microsoft Office Preloaded Includes a pre-loaded image of select Microsoft Office 2010 suites. Purchase an Office 2010 Product Key Card or disc to activate preloaded software on this PC. Software Drivers & Utilities, Nero Essentials S, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, Norton Internet Security (60 days trial), Recovery, Windows 7 / Windows 8 Pro Twin-Pack recovery DVD


    OEM said:
    Compatible operating systems

    Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Windows 7 Home Basic (EM) 32-bit,\r\nWindows Vista, Windows XP, \r\nopenSUSE Linux
    Windows 8.1 specs:
    OEM said:
    Windows 7 Professional Load with Windows 8.1 Pro license + Office 2013 trial,
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 334
    7 home premium 64 bit
       #12

    From my personal experience it is a pain. It is possible though. These are links from my past experience with this.

    Installing 7 on a windows 8 laptop. Do i need to worry about drivers?

    Installed windows 7 on a laptop that used to have 8.1 need drivers

    I need AMD Radeon HD 8650G + 8670M switchable graphics driver for 7

    Toshiba actually saved my HP laptop. Toshiba was the only brand that had the driver I needed so my hp has a toshiba graphics driver lol

    The ABSOLUTE first thing you do is backup your new win 8 laptop so if it doesn't work you can get windows 8 back. You should have something like a one time windows 8 partition with all your drivers. Make a disk of that.
    The next thing you will need is the win 7 LAN driver so you can get internet.
    Than you need to know what graphics system the laptop has and see if you can get drivers for it.

    In the end i mostly used the windows 8 drivers lol. Some of them worked on 7.

    Before you do this READ READ READ. There is a lot of stuff you need to know.

    P.S. You will not have a MBR (Master Boot Record) partition table. You will have a GPT partition table.

    You will also need to set your EUFI bios to legacy mode.

    When you decide on a model of toshiba laptop let us know and we will advise you on how easy it will be to accomplish.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 44
    win 7 pro 32 bit
       #13

    i have a dell d610 that was OEM win xp that i upgraded to 7 pro 32. I simply went to the dell site and found all the drivers that would work some using the win 7 compatibilty hardware wizard. win 7 also did a kazillion updates upon initial install and did some driver updates that worked great. this d610 i have is amazing...this old guy has 3.4 index and its fast as heck.
    I am curious of why so many people dont want win 8. Does it suck or sumptin? anyway good luck with your system and from what I've seen of Toshiba systems, they load good good good hardware... let us know how your install goes

    thanks Jim
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       #14

    Rus2 said:
    I owe everyone an apology. My post was a theoretical scenario. I want to buy a new Toshiba laptop but they all come with Win 8 and I want to format and install Win 7 but I know I will need Win 7 drivers. I was hoping there would be an honest, trustful software package that would provide the necessary drivers. You see, I'm sooooo lazy!!
    Well Rus I upgraded my Toshiba (and Sandy Bridge) from 7 to 8 then to 8.1 and have it running as a 7 machine using Stardock and Classic Shell.
    The former you pay for the Classic is free and to be honest there is not much difference between 7 & 8 in my view apart from slight alterations to back up, how a PDF is opened, and msconfig settings. As a matter of fact the Toshiba now runs five times faster with 8.1 than it did with 7. You can flick between the two different systems although i run mine almost exclusively in 7 mode.

    The alternative is to just get an OEM 7 and install it - if I were you on a new drive so that you can keep the old 8 drive as a spare and if you wanted to experiment.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 34
    win 7
    Thread Starter
       #15

    ICit2lol said:
    Rus2 said:
    I owe everyone an apology. My post was a theoretical scenario. I want to buy a new Toshiba laptop but they all come with Win 8 and I want to format and install Win 7 but I know I will need Win 7 drivers. I was hoping there would be an honest, trustful software package that would provide the necessary drivers. You see, I'm sooooo lazy!!
    Well Rus I upgraded my Toshiba (and Sandy Bridge) from 7 to 8 then to 8.1 and have it running as a 7 machine using Stardock and Classic Shell.
    The former you pay for the Classic is free and to be honest there is not much difference between 7 & 8 in my view apart from slight alterations to back up, how a PDF is opened, and msconfig settings. As a matter of fact the Toshiba now runs five times faster with 8.1 than it did with 7. You can flick between the two different systems although i run mine almost exclusively in 7 mode.

    The alternative is to just get an OEM 7 and install it - if I were you on a new drive so that you can keep the old 8 drive as a spare and if you wanted to experiment.
    Sounds like the way to go. Thanks.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       #16

    Well if you don't store a lot of documents pics etc then I would go a SSD (a whole lot faster) for the drive if you can afford it a 250GB suits me fine (even a 120GB would do) and if you do store a lot of pics and docs then use an external which you should anyway via a regular imaging.

    TIP I always back up the registry as soon as the install has settled down after the updates. :)

    Mind yo don't forget doing this might void the warranty if new.
      My Computer


 
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