Solved How do I downgrade from WIN7 Enterprise to WIN7 Pro

[Loosing It]

I have WIN7 Enterprise installed on my system and need to downgrade to WIN7 Pro for reasons of product application/compatibility under Windows Media Center.

 

[LMiller7]

Enterprise edition is not a retail product but is available only to large organizations with bulk licensing. You should contact the IT staff about these issues.

 

[Loosing It]

No IT Dept

I bought this computer from a company that is no longer in business during a "fire" sale. I have no IT Dept to call.

 

[derekimo]

This should help you out.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

[LMiller7]

I bought this computer from a company that is no longer in business during a "fire" sale. I have no IT Dept to call.

In that case I doubt you have a legal right to use the OS. You would need to purchase a copy of Windows 7 Pro and do a clean install.

 

[Loosing It]

Possible data loss

I have only one HD on the system and it is 3TB. There is about 1.6TB of data on the drive, so I believe a clean install would destroy that data. It is not on a separate partition. I have a properly licensed copy of WIN7 Pro.

 

[derekimo]

If it's worth keeping it's worth backing up to another drive before the install.

Backups are always a good idea anyway.

 

[Loosing It]

SSD for System

Could I possibly install a small, say 32GB, SSD as a new "C" drive and disconnect the current drive. Then I would install WIN7 Pro on the new drive and reconnect the current drive as the "D" drive. Then delete the Windows directory on the "D" drive leaving me with my data intact and a new "C" drive to install my applications on.

 

[gregrocker]

As long as the SSD is large enough for your OS and programs, you can link the User folders from the HDD. However with the paging file and modern hibernate function file you'd still probably want something bigger. But an SSD is the way to go for performance boost.

In that case you'd want to unplug all other drives during the Clean Install Windows 7.

If you decide to install on the current HDD, you can use Partition Wizard to Resize Partition - Video Help
to carve out a partition big enough for Win7 on the left side of the HDD which has fastest read/writes due to being where the reader parks. As long as you only touch the space you made there during install your data should be safe. However it's always best to have data backed up externally since the HD could fail.

 

[AddRAM]

You beat me to it Greg

I wouldn`t waste money on a 32 GB ssd, don`t get anything smaller then 120 GBs, You could also just grab another Hard drive to install the system on then copy over your data to the new drive, format the old, then copy the data back to the old drive.

 

[Loosing It]

Thanks for the help

OK gentlemen, I think I have a solution worked out. Thank you again for your help.

 

[gregrocker]

Let us know what you've decided, because after helping with tens of thousands of these we can see the problems before they arise.