Hi. I am looking for help with my Acer v3-571 Laptop. It came preinstalled with Win 8 and I later upgraded to Win 10. All my other machines use Win 7 and so I decided I'd like to install this on the Acer laptop when the time came for a refresh as I don't like 10, and like 8 even less so.
Before I started, I made a partition on the hard drive from within Windows, and in it I put all the files I was concerned about keeping. (This is what I have always done when re installing operating systems in the past.)
When I rebooted the laptop I couldn't get the Win 7 DVD to boot. I tried the usual changing the DVD drive higher in the order in the boot sequence etc which didn't work, so I changed the boot mode in the bios to Legacy, instead of UEFI which enabled me to boot the Win 7 install DVD.
I was able to get to the part where you can see the partitions on the hard drive and choose where you want to install windows. I opted to to format the partition where windows 10 had been installed, and then attempted to select this partition for my fresh Win 7 install. I noticed I was not able to select the partition, below the window which displays the partitions was a message: "Windows cannot be installed to Disk ) partition 4. (Show details) - (details: Windows cannot be installed to the disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.) I then tried to make a UEFI bootable Win 7 USB storage flash drive using Rufus. This did boot, but only got as far as the Win 7 loading graphic before freezing.
So I am now in a situation where I am unable to install Windows 7, but I am also unable to restore Windows 10, as I deleted the partition. The recovery partition is still intact, and so when I boot the laptop (back in UEFI) it takes me into the recovery screens. However, if I select the option 'reset this PC', I am told that 'the drive is locked. Unlock the drive and try again', or 'Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing'. Can anyone suggest a way I can install windows & on this Laptop and Hard drive, or alternatively, can I put the hard drive in another PC and retrieve the files I need from the partition I made to save my files, and then format in such a way that I can then install Win 7 on it using legacy bios settings?
Thanks for any help in advance.
Before I started, I made a partition on the hard drive from within Windows, and in it I put all the files I was concerned about keeping. (This is what I have always done when re installing operating systems in the past.)
When I rebooted the laptop I couldn't get the Win 7 DVD to boot. I tried the usual changing the DVD drive higher in the order in the boot sequence etc which didn't work, so I changed the boot mode in the bios to Legacy, instead of UEFI which enabled me to boot the Win 7 install DVD.
I was able to get to the part where you can see the partitions on the hard drive and choose where you want to install windows. I opted to to format the partition where windows 10 had been installed, and then attempted to select this partition for my fresh Win 7 install. I noticed I was not able to select the partition, below the window which displays the partitions was a message: "Windows cannot be installed to Disk ) partition 4. (Show details) - (details: Windows cannot be installed to the disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.) I then tried to make a UEFI bootable Win 7 USB storage flash drive using Rufus. This did boot, but only got as far as the Win 7 loading graphic before freezing.
So I am now in a situation where I am unable to install Windows 7, but I am also unable to restore Windows 10, as I deleted the partition. The recovery partition is still intact, and so when I boot the laptop (back in UEFI) it takes me into the recovery screens. However, if I select the option 'reset this PC', I am told that 'the drive is locked. Unlock the drive and try again', or 'Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing'. Can anyone suggest a way I can install windows & on this Laptop and Hard drive, or alternatively, can I put the hard drive in another PC and retrieve the files I need from the partition I made to save my files, and then format in such a way that I can then install Win 7 on it using legacy bios settings?
Thanks for any help in advance.
