Madness trying to install 7 and get rid of 8

[oxidious]

Ok so here's my predicament. I got a new laptop from a friend. It was running windows 8. I wanted to install windows 10 now that it's out, but I had to update to 8.1 first. It wouldn't update windows. I tried multiple solutions for this. I decided to just get a cracked version of windows 8.1 since I didn't have a disc for this laptop anymore. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to activate genuinely. So I've decided to revert to windows 7 using my legal copy I have for my other PC (now that it's running 10).

The laptop doesn't have a disc drive so I've tried putting it on a USB but any time I make the USB flash drive (8GB) a bootable flash drive, it ends up corrupt and unreadable. So I finally found a way to get the setup on my computer through homegroup, but now it says I need to have 699MB free on my boot disc. I found out this has to do with permissions, so I followed instructions to use command prompt. I did the net user active:yes thing (can't remember the whole command) and I received an "ACCESS DENIED". I then got the subinacl.msi and followed those instructions to create "reset.bat" etc. That hasn't worked either.

Any advice? I'm at my wits end with this laptop!

 

[paul1149]

Buy an external USB DVD drive.

 

[Ztruker]

If it came with 8 then it's a UEFI/GPT system. See here: How to Downgrade Windows 8 Preinstalled to Windows 7

A better alternative would be to download a Windows 8.1 ISO from MS then install it. It will pick up the embedded key from BIOS. Just make sure you get the same version you have (Home, Pro, Ultimate) and the right bitness, 32 or 64.

See here: How to Create or Download a Windows 8 and 8.1 ISO

Create the ISO then use it to burn a UEFI/GPT DVD or create a UEFI/GPT flash drive using Rufus. Use that to boot and clean install from: How to Do a Clean Install of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1

Once done, then upgrade to Windows 10 doing the same thing, only this time do an upgrade by inserting the DVD or flash drive then run setup.exe from it. How to Download a Windows 10 ISO File