Some factory OEM-installed Samsung Laptop or so arrived at my place, and the owner wants to use Win7 instead. Initially when I get my hands on unused brand-new stuff, I first disassemble the hardware and extract the hard-drive and image it for backing it completely up in its untouched unused factory-state, so even before very first power-on attempt. Odd thing was, I did this many times over with Win7 oem machinery, and they all came already partitioned the normal Win7 OEM ways, with 100meg sys partition and large C/Winblows partition and some with addtl recovery partition. This Win8 machinery came with no visible partition to my external computer at all, no partition boundaries, no file system visible and recognizable, so I needed to back it up with forensic sector-wise copy (e.g. your usual tools can probably deal with it, i used o&o-software image in its various forensic modes). So anyways, this Win8 machine is now booted up and the owner really hates it, so the option is acquire some Win7 OEM license and sticker via epay or similar means and go for that solution. Does the community need anything off this Win8 Samsung OEM factory installation, or the raw forensic image or anything? Maybe I can provide some files or stuff that would be of interest. Or maybe people have already provided Samsung related Win8 stuff. Its Samsung Win8-64bit standard, so no professional or fancy stuff I guess. Maybe even any ways of getting refund from OEM manufacturer for unused Win8 license? We all hate this crap enormously. Any more advice? Regards.
My brother ordered his new Dell w/ Win7 installed instead of W8. Wouldn't that of worked for your customer?
dunno what you are talking about really, maybe you are doing that as a profession or something, but i didnt order this piece of machinery and this is all consumer grade scenarios. so no dell here and besides i told that it is a samsung and it comes with win8. these are the facts. i cannot change this reality. dont bother replying if you have only offtopic stuff to add. thanks anyways.
Seems to be a bit late for that! Those machine is already bought! If the OP like, he could extract the Recovery partition and also saves the BIOS because the Product Key is within the BIOS! May some of the BIOS Modders or developers like to get their hand on it?!
In this MSDN link here : xxxx://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg463525.aspx Yo can read this : Question. Is it possible to make a sector-by-sector copy of a GPTdisk ? Answer. No. The Disk and Partition GUIDs will no longer be unique. This must never happen. You can make a sector-by-sector copy of the contents of ESP or basic data partitions.
GPT, hmm this is interesting stuff, I have forgotton about that. Didnt thing they would go for GPT on smallish disks. Maybe they only do GPT as of Win8 in general? Didnt follow the whole buzz during development of Win8. But: why wouldnt I be able to sector-wise copy everything on a foreign system. That other system didnt even know anything about GPT, it is 32bit system, so it simply copied all sectors to its image file and it was all good. Dont understand how there can be any trouble with GUIDs or stuff inside those GPT sectors if I simply back them up completely. Maybe the owner will want to go back to Win8 later on, and I simply re-create all sectors later (in a few years or whenever) from the raw-image to the raw-disk-sectors and all will be in the same state as after factory deployment, wont it? Please elaborate. Thanks.
I think that nearly every OEM pre-installed Laptop comes with UEFI and a GPT partition table I am not able to go further in explanations. I an no an expert in these questions Maybe your method (creating an restoring a image sector by sector) is going to work. I just reported what is said: a sector by sector copy in not possible because " The Disk and Partition GUIDs will no longer be unique " If you read more in that MSDN FAQ link, you find this: Question. Is there any way to copy a whole GPT disk using the OPK imaging tools? Answer. Yes. However, there are some key caveats. The OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) initializes the Disk and Partition GUIDs to zero. On first boot of Windows, the operating system generates unique GUIDs. The OPK only supports generation of ESP, MSR, and basic data partitions. If an application has recorded any Disk or Partition GUIDs it may break. Any applications, drivers, utilities, or firmware implementations supplied by system manufacturers or application vendors that rely on GUIDs should be capable of handling GUIDs that change from the OPK initialization values to those generated by the operating system
somehow this all doesnt make sense in the backup scenario I am doing here. The backup is just for the case that the user wants to use this same machine from its original factory installed state. and if forensic imaging can copy and fetch all sectors from the disc in raw mode and can write them back at a later time, then the machine is per definition in no other state than during the copy and when leaving the factory. so guid and whatever else everything is on the disk and in the raw sectors image. nothing changed, everything is fine. maybe i should clean the disk and re-write the raw image just to test what happens and if the laptop is still booting its original win8 state. whatever. thanks for replying.
I think you were trying to backup the hard drive of the samsung using a usb to sata adapter or usb enclosure. Some gpt drives don't get detected properly by the os like that, you have to hook it upto a internal sata port or esata port and than you will see all the info and partitions on the disk. I just did that with my samsung laptop and it took 20 minutes to backup the whole drive using "image for windows". Now, if I ever want to go back to windows 8 I can just put that image back on the hd.
if its just the lack of strart menu your friend has issues with then the good news is Microsoft will be restoring it again in the Summer.
Quoting a somewhat loose translation of a russian site doesn't make the statement necessarily true I'm affraid. And before you say that this lil' piece of news is all over the web,every link I tried ultimately cited the russian site,which doesn't give one tiny shred of evidence to support its claims...
Acronis True Image 2013 supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and GUID partition Table (GPT) disks. You can back up and recover partitions, volumes, files and folders on GPT disks.
So far we have discussed the possibility of making a backup of a Windows 8 OEM installation. The MSDN FAQ link says that a copy (i.e. a copy disk to disk ? ) of a GPT disk will not work, a image and restore of the whole HD made using o&o-softwareimage in its various forensic modes will probably do the job (you just have tomake the experiment) But the first post of the topic says: So are we now going to discuss or not the way to install Windows 7 on a hard disk that has a GUID partition table (GPT) at the moment ?
What is there to discuss - just either select the EFI boot option for the relevant install media drive,or if the board is slightly older - select 'boot from efi file' and point it to the file on the CD or USB (depending on what install media the OP will use). Afterwards is a straight-forward install experience .
Just contact micro$oft and ask them about the downgrade options. They will give you a code to install windows 7.
You may see it that way, still you're wrong! any way to use to activate any Windows version other than given or supplied by the developer is an act of piracy. Don't fool people to tell that Windows is Freeware! It simply isn't!
Unauthorized and pirated use of Windows Editions are considered the same breach of Copyright Law! That's only different names and both is against existing Law. Neither of them is mean of using a "cracked" Windows, it could be but must! And you also wrong if you think that MS isn't doing anything! They do, may not to private users, to Business users they do! And you do a mistake to admit that the use of an loader is legal or even semi-legal, it isn't! You even fool yourself! I know from a few companies who paid quite a bit of money to BSA and MS for to using exactly those loaders for Windows! As long as you didn't get convicted, maybe that's fine, that end's exactly at the same moment they "Official's" get their hand on you!
OEM SLP legally allowed downgrade rights as per the licence agreement, you should even have a SLIC 2.1 Marker. Search the forum and you will figure out how to use SLIC toolkit to check and then install Win 7 with OEM SLP key and Cert. Hint Windows 7 thread.
I am in the same situation in terms of wanting to remove Win 8 from a new Lenova and replace with win 7 for a friend. With regard to downgrade licence rights, i believe this only applies if you have Win 8 Pro preinstalled as opposed to standard, which most units have instead. Also the BIOS is UEFI and the toolkit reveals little and doesn't see the BIOS. It seems that maybe these BIOSes need modding or a SLIC marker inserting to enable activation via cert and key. The BIOS may have to be switched to legacy mode. I'm still researching this myself so please correctme if I am in error. i can't even dump the BIOS as the tool won't read it. Nor can i download it as it's not on the lenovo site.