A friend asked me to recommend a notebook to buy, and I told him an HP one, which, between the choices he had, and for his budget, it was the best bang for the buck. The problem was that it comes with a legal installed version of windows 8.1 Pro, and my friend wanted windows 7. I told him "no problem, it comes with the right to downgrade to windows 7". Since he hesitated, at the problem of installing W7, I guaranteed him that I would do the downgrade, and he purchased the evil notebook. The problem is that I installed any W7 I had on a pen drive, but at the time of validating the license, it does not accept the one stored in BIOS. I did the same thing with lots of notebooks, and used the license pasted by Micros**t under the laptop, and it ever worked, but it looks like W7 cannot read license keys stored in BIOS. Anyways, I recovered the key in the bios, and tried to activate W7 with it, but it refuses to accept that string as a valid one. I called MS support, and they refused to help. They said that it is HP responsibility. Then I contacted HP support in HP USA, because the notebook is imported from USA (I live in South America). HP USA told me that I can only install an HP Windows 7 DVD, or the license will not work, but they will not send me the free DVD because South America is too far, and they are too lazy to give me a download link. HP USA told me that I should ask the disk to HP of my country. So I contacted HP of my country, and asked for the Win 7 DVD, but they refused, because they do not support HP notebooks sold in USA. It is a catch 22 where HP laughs all the way to the bank with my friend money, meanwhile we are totally f**ked. On synthesis: HP gave me the middle finger, and refuses to honor his obligation of providing the paid Win 7 downgrade. So, the question is: is possible to force win 7 to accept the BIOS key? I think that W7 does not recognize the key because it does not support UEFI, but I do not have any W7 CD with UEFI support, didn't found any way to install UEFI support, and do not even know if that has something to do with the problem. I replaced the HD with a SSD, so I still have the W8.1 fully installed on his HD.
I do know much about the BIOS but there is a HP Windows 7 Professional 64bit DVD on eBay for $10 U.S. Maybe that will help.
I totally agree. I don't even notice the difference between my Win8 & Win7 boxes. My apps are run from taskbar or desktop...
I already installed classic shell on the 8.1, but it has a nasty problem with the wireless network: it does not works when a wireless HP printer is on the same network, and HP haves no updated driver, and offers no solution, other than a "refund", which is only valid on USA. The wireless driver in 7 works flawlessly.