I got HP Pavilion DV4T-1400 Laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Pre-Installed. Didn’t got Vista DVD. But there was an offer that I will get Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Upgrade DVD Free when Windows 7 will be released. I got Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Upgrade DVD. I upgraded i.e did a clean install of Win 7 Home Premium 64 with the upgrade DVD on my Laptop.
I have 2 queries
- I installed the required drivers for Win 7 64 for my laptop model HP Pavilion DV4T-1400 from HP site. The drivers list also mentions BIOS which is higher than the BIOS on my system. Now this system was originally Vista i.e came with Vista Pre-Installed as I mentioned above.
Should/Can I upgrade BIOS i.e install BIOS mentioned in the drivers list?
- My cousin got HP Pavilion DV4T-1500 Laptop with Win 7 Home Premium 64 Pre-Installed. But didn’t got the DVD. He wants to reinstall Win 7.
Can I use my Win 7 64 Upgrade DVD to install Win 7 on his laptop?
Your cousin’s laptop probably has a restore partition with a factory clean install of Win 7. With OEM machines there is usually a boot option to boot to the “installation” environment and then install from there. Make sure you have retrieved all valuable data from the laptop as it will be overwritten.
After install make a second partition for data using EaseUS Free partition manager and move the default data folders from Windows (Pictures, Documents, Videos) etc to the data partition.
Make sure to get a free Technet account so that you can check the hash codes for the Windows 7 iso files. I find the forums of My Digital Life very insightful for questions like yours.
Legitimate Win7 .iso files:
If you delete or rename the ei.cfg file in the .iso before burning a Windows 7 installation DVD, the menu then allows you to select which version to install (the .iso contains all versions).
My laptop shows sometimes charging & sometimes not charging. This is a bug & upgrade BIOS contains a fix. I installed BIOS successfully.
Does install through restore partition gives option to install only OS i.e no HP products & other trials/offers craps? Is the install clean like DVD install i.e no remnants on harddisk, registry, etc…?
I know genuine online iso but wanted to know about upgrade DVD.
I searched a lot & got confusing replies in various forums. Some mentioned Upgrade DVD can be used to reinstall if the laptop has any genuine activated OS install & no probs with Windows activation too. Some mentioned it cannot be used coz Windows activation fails, but they also mentioned a registry hack to do so, & a user also mentioned that this registry hack was also mentioned by Microsoft support when he had a prob & contacted them. Some also mentioned that they successfully installed & activated Windows on a fresh harddisk with upgrade DVD. A user mentioned to install with upgrade DVD & create a blank folder named windows.old in the root of the harddisk for successful Windows activation. A user in Microsoft forum mentioned upgrade DVD can be used & Windows activates successfully & if any prob with activation contact Microsoft. He also mentioned something like with Windows 7 Microsoft have changed some policy or something with Windows installation & activation.
I think there will be no prob with installation but activation may or may not give prob.
I purchased Windows Vista shortly before 7 came out because I knew I would receive a free upgrade to 7. I never installed Vista and when I installed 7 I used the DVD and did a clean install. I thought that the upgrade DVD would at least prompt for a Vista key, but it didn’t. I remember XP being picky about your CD being the right type of image (OEM vs retail). I don’t know about 7. You can try and see what happens.
I’ve dealt with restore DVD’s and restore partitions and as of yet I haven’t seen any that would allow you to not install their garbage-ware that bogs down your machine. Considering it’s HP, you probably won’t get any options for that.