Solved Restore Win 7 from Win 8 Using OEM Recovery Partition

[adamsbryce1695]

Hi, I have an Acer Aspire that came with Win7 Home Prem. x64 installed. I made the foolish decision to upgrade to Win 8 Pro on Oct 26th when it came out, and I like the idea, but the system just isn't useable to me, and my windows updates constantly fail. no fun.

When I press F8 during startup, it goes to Win 8's hideous blue startup options screen, and when I head to recovery, it says there's no windows 8 recovery. However, in Disk Mgmt I can clearly see my OEM 15GB "Recovery Partition" as well as the 100MB System Reserved Partition. I tried to add the Recovery partition in EasyBCD but it wouldn't show the Recovery Partition, only the System Reserved. Screenshots attached.

I didn't make win7 Restore Disks when I first got the computer because it failed on every attempt, so I left it be. Big mistake. Any ideas how to get my beloved win7 back, even though it'll be fresh? any help is much appreciated!

Thanks! -bryce

 

[gregrocker]

Hey Bryce -

Try running Acer factory recovery: Acer Support - Answers, E-Mail, Chat - How do I restore my computer using the eRecovery Management program? followed by Clean Up Factory Bloatware

But even better follow these steps to get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 without the Acer crapware and useless duplicate utilties. If you go that route you can even delete all partitions during booted install with the Win7 DVD provided.

 

[theog]

Hi greg

Acer Support - Answers, E-Mail, Chat - How do I restore my computer using the eRecovery Management program?
Nice video.

Hi adamsbrye1695

You can Order Acer recovery disks from here:
https://secure.tx.acer.com/RCDB/Main.aspx?brand=acer
or
You can mark the Acer Recovery partition active form a live CD like
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html?ltr=S
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html?ltr=P

 

[adamsbryce1695]

Thanks Greg! I totally forgot I even had the eRecovery program. It worked like a charm

 

[gregrocker]

Glad it helped.

Be sure to Clean Up Factory Bloatware to at least disable all of the startup freeloaders, get the native Win7 performance without interference.

 

[adamsbryce1695]

Already got it taken care of

 

[gregrocker]

Great, so if performance shakes out good then you can mark the thread Solved at top when ready.