Windows 7 Laptop with Vista Partition - Upgrade?

[thescullster]

Hi all

I am trying to understand the history of a laptop. The product key sticker on the back shows Windows 7 Home Premium as the OS. Looking at the partitions themselves, one of them is labelled Vista (the other two partitions are WinRe and Data).

If the laptop originally had Vista installed in the shop and it was upgraded to Win 7 before sale, would this account for the different partition labelling? Or is the Vista partition proof positive that the laptop has had the OS reinstalled at some time?

I guess anyone using a PC or laptop that has been upgraded from Vista to

7 should have the answer to this one.

Thanks

Phil

[Bob Minchin]

I read in here only yesterday that the upgrade to Win7 cannot be done from XP directly and that an intermediate stage is to upgrade to vista first. Maybe this has happened to yours?

[Martin Bonner]

Firstly, the partition labels don't necessarily have anything to do with the contents of the partition.

What operating system is currently installed?

I would expect reinstalling the OS to leave the partition labels untouched.

Note that the original manufacturing process may have been upgraded so that the partition image put on the partition called "Vista" contained a Win7 operating system.

[thescullster]

Thanks Bob

Yes that's entirely possible. I really need group members who have carried out these upgrades to have a squint at their hard drive labels in explorer and clarify whether the labels are changed during the process.

Phil

[thescullster]

Thanks Martin

Understood

The laptop will not boot so that's a tricky one. I have accessed the drive via USB caddy to get the partition labels.

This sounds shoddy practice. Do you have examples of manufacturers and I will steer clear.

Phil

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My laptop was just that - bought as Win7, but came with Vista loaded and a free upgrade, which IIRC had to be applied for. Which couldn't happen fast enough. ;-)

[thescullster]

Thanks Dave

So how are your hard drive partitions labelled?

Were they originally labelled Vista and changed to Win 7? Did they retain the Vista label? Or did they have non-OS-specific labels?

Phil

[Dave Plowman (News)]

According to the disc manager, there is a 10GB recovery partition. It has no name or drive letter. The other one is ACER C

I'm afraid I dunno. It's the first time I've actually looked as I've not needed the recovery partition - although I suspected it was there, in common with most factory loaded OS where they don't give you discs.

[thescullster]

OK thanks for your trouble Dave

Phil

[Chris K]

OK, assuming it is an Acer machine, the recovery partition is called PQSERVICE and is a FAT32 partition with a different partiton type value.

The BIOS would normally have a setting to start recovery, if you can't see this, then setting the recovery partition as the active partition with probably do it. That should restore the original OS - presumably WIN7 if that is what is on the sticker. It will not use the licence code on the sticker but will be an Acer Bios locked code and will not need activation.

You would be wise to make partition image backups of the existing partitions first in case there is a need to revert.

Something like this

will do it, you may need to install on another machine first to generate the bootable stand alone disk.

-and remember to delete all the manufacturer installed bloatware.

Could it have been a corporate cast off and had a corporate Vista image installed?

HTH

Chris K

[Adrian C]

WinRe is a label used for the 'Windows Recovery Environment', something that first saw the light of day with Vista.

I think your laptop was originally supplied with Windows 7 Home premium and the existance of Vista might be as someone in the shop didn't have the OEM windows 7 media to go straight there in a rebuild.

Windows 7 Home Premium didn't have downgrade rights, so it's unlikely the previous user would have had Vista installed purposely for use, well not officially.

Have a look at

and see if there are any 'downlevel' log files lying around.

[Steve]

Sorry but that's wrong. An 'in place upgrade' cannot be done from XP to Win 7, which means that the user data will have to be saved first, then during the Win 7 install you must choose "Custom" install. This formats the drive and wipes everything off, which is why you have to save your data first or you'll lose it.

But you absolutely do not need to do an intermediate install of Vista first - you can go directly from XP to 7.