Windows 10 to Windows 7 Downgrade

[JacobDuncan00]

I am currently on windows 10 and have a bootable usb for a windows 7 install. When I boot off of the usb I go through the installation process and get to the partition and formatting of my hard drive. I can see my primary hard drive that already has windows 10 installed on it, it does not make me format the hard drive and acts as if I can install windows 7 to it without formatting it. Will this cause any problems or am I safe to not format the hard drive? Also, will I retain my drivers?

[LAwLz]

Click on the Drive options (advanced) button.

Click on Delete for each partition that is listed and you want to erase.

You will now have one big unallocated space listed. Just click next with that one selected and the drive will be formatted during the install.

 

Please note that this will delete everything on your drive.

[JacobDuncan00]

I have my drivers on an external hard drive, After windows 7 installs can I install them from the external hard drive immediately?  What would I do if I don't have a USB or mouse driver after windows 7 installs because that has happened to me before.

[Changis]

if it's a laptop or prebuilt system, there is most likely a recovery tool you can use to make a recovery backup.
always format your drives for clean installs of windows (no, you can't downgrade, atleast not easily, unless you upgraded from 7 and still are within the grace period) formatting your drive erases everything on it, so make sure you backup your files first.

some laptops have recovery on a partition on the harddrive, if so, making a recovery set is not needed for this (but should be done anyway in case your hdd stops working or you want to upgrade it to an ssd (if applicable))

make sure the size of the drive you want to install to is the exact size as the drive you want to use (within a couple of gigs, depends on harddrives, 1tb shows 931gb, 500gb shows 465gb
if your laptop has a recovery partition, there will what looks like  either an extra harddrive of 20-30gb or 20-30gb less then advertized drive space on the main drive.

 

some manufacturers also partition a secondary D: volume.. if this is the case, you should remove this secondary partition and just have it as one large drive (with or without recovery partition).. don't have your singe harddrive act as two active drives.. as it slows down as soon as you read/write to both (even small things as it's the same drive and have to do twice the work)
 

Spoiler

 1GB according to the disk manufacturers is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes. According to how the operating system (and the rest of the computing world) calculates it, it's equal to 1,024 megabytes. So one GB as per the disk manufacturer is really 1,000,000,000 / (1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024) = .931GB as measured by everybody else. So a "500GB" disk has 500 x .931GB of storage, or 465GB.

 

 

[Changis]

1 minute ago, JacobDuncan00 said:

I have my drivers on an external hard drive, After windows 7 installs can I install them from the external hard drive immediately?  What would I do if I don't have a USB or mouse driver after windows 7 installs because that has happened to me before.

to be sure: use black usb2.0 outputs, don't use front panel plugs (though this should work fine, but there is an extra cable between the plug and motherboard), or use ps/2 if you have, you can install with keyboard only, a bit more finicky, but not overly complicated

if your mouse and keyboard is recognized in windows install, it should work in windows without any drivers

[JacobDuncan00]

what if my external hard drive is not recognized by windows? is that possible? I'm really skeptical but I want to downgrade asap. Just want to make sure nothing goes wrong. Thanks

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Your external HDD will most likely be recognized. Win7 comes with plenty of basic drivers and external HDD manufacturers try to make sure they work out of the box.

 

One thing you could do is download all the Windows 7 drivers for your machine beforehand. 

On the bootable USB you can make a folder named "Drivers" - or whatever you want to name it - and put them on there (as long as you have the space, you should be fine with an 8GB stick though). 

 

When your new Win7 install is up and running, just copy that drivers folder over to the desktop and start installing them.  You may need a generic mouse, although most trackpads will have very basic functionality until you install the proper drivers. 

[Changis]

4 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Your external HDD will most likely be recognized. Win7 comes with plenty of basic drivers and external HDD manufacturers try to make sure they work out of the box.

 

One thing you could do is download all the Windows 7 drivers for your machine beforehand. 

On the bootable USB you can make a folder named "Drivers" - or whatever you want to name it - and put them on there (as long as you have the space, you should be fine with an 8GB stick though). 

 

When your new Win7 install is up and running, just copy that drivers folder over to the desktop and start installing them.  You may need a generic mouse, although most trackpads will have very basic functionality until you install the proper drivers. 

I, your helpful assistant, Cato, agrees with you Captain.. Dun Dun DUUUUUUUUUN!