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December 28, 2012

Successfully upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7 on HP Pavilion G7-2240US and fix the issue of Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style

My wife got the new HP Windows 8 laptop (HP Pavilion G7-2240US) last week. After she played around it, she didn't like Windows 8 because there was no productivity in her daily job tasks. I totally agreed. 

I don't understand why Microsoft removes the function of disabling Metro UI in Windows 8 RTM, but it was allowed in Windows Developer Preview Version. I have no complaints about Windows RTM in Tablets or Surface Computers. I do have complaints about there is no Windows 8 desktop version for laptop like Windows 7.

She wanted me to "upgrade" Windows 8 (Consumer version) to Windows 7 in this new HP laptop. Here are my steps:

Use F10 key to go to BIOS setup. It has the function called Legacy support. We need to enable it and it can let us install Windows 7.  EFI BIOS will be disabled automatically.

Use Internal CD ROM to boot Windows 7 CD

When installing Windows 7 x64, the setup screen told me to install Windows 7 in a new partition disk. However, I got the error dialog box saying Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.

Don’t panic.  Use Shift + F10 and it goes to command prompt.

Enter the following command

diskpart

List disk

Select disk 1

Select partition 1

Clean

Convert mbr :

If I didn’t use clean command, I could not convert GPT to MBR successfully.

After using clean command, I converted GPT to MBR successfully. After rebooting the machine, I installed Windows 7 without any issue.

If you don’t like Windows 8 on your new laptop, you can try to "upgrade" it to Windows 7 and meet your needs. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is awesome.
The only I had has the Windows 8 drivers do not work with Windows 7.

There is another model that has Windows 7 driver that at least the LAN network adapter worked with W7 64bit only.
g7-2124nr


http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4063&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=5273805#N376

Ray said...

Per my understanding, some drivers can't be detected automatically in Windows 8. We need to download them. But they don't work well. :)

Unknown said...

Your post really cool and interesting. Thanks very much.

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Unknown said...

Thank you! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!! :D
I'd never figure that out... already been googling through hundreds of forums finding nothing.

Ray said...

Hope it is working for you.