NP530Uxx Thread (Series 5 ultrabook)

It's difficult, both because your Win8 is an UEFI/GPT installation and because Win7's boot loader (which you will be installing last) doesn't know how to boot Win8.

I have Win7 and Win8 on two partitions, and my Recovery too. But it was much easier, because I started with a Win7 (non-UEFI/MBR) installation.

Before you do anything, I strongly advice that you use Recovery to create a bootable factory image backup. You need a 32GB USB flash drive (anything but SanDisk should work) which will then become a Recovery in itself with built-in factory image. You can use it to re-image your disk if it gets messed up. You'll likely need it before this project is over. Seriously.

I'm away from my pc now, but look around here and you will find advice about that Recovery backup. For example, check the first post of the Ativ Book 8 Owners Lounge.

Once you have that, you need to decide if you'll stay in UEFI mode or switch to legacy BIOS mode (non-UEFI): The latter is simpler and works better with Win7, but requires wiping your disk (including Recovery). And you need clean Win8 install media.

If you manage to get it all working with dual-boot, you will find that your ExpressCache gets flushed every time you switch between the two - even if you only install it in one of them. Very annoying, and makes it less attractive to switch between the two.

Personally, I would recommend getting a 3rd party Start Menu for Win8 instead, and simply use it the same way as Win7. You'll save yourself much work; and you hardly ever have to see the Metro screen if you don't want to.

 

thanks for all the information its helpful
and I think I will stick to win 8 but when I was talking about win7 that I will operate it alone without win 8 and the recovery of win 8 will be like backup
and by the way can I uninstall the win 8 single language(x64) that came with laptop to (x86) ultimate or the single language (x64) is better

 

Apparently I was hugely WRONG about this.. Sorry and thanks to Dannemand for clarifying.

Regarding start menu SW, I use Start8, but there are many options out there, and considering i don't look for an option in over a year, maybe you should browse a little.

 

Actually, guys, I am the one who was wrong here, because I misunderstood tamer's original post: I see now you were NOT looking to dual-boot Win7 and Win8 (as I had understood) but merely to install Win7 while keeping your Recovery. That's perfectly sensible.

Installing Win7 in UEFI mode on the current GPT drive is still tricky, but may be doable when you are not concerned about preserving Win8. But you are still faced with the problem that Win7 and UEFI is historically tricky on Samsung laptops.

I think a better solution is to create that Bootable Factory Image backup on a 32GB USB stick (using the first two steps in this post) then switch to legacy BIOS/MBR mode and install Win7. This will wipe the disk, but you now have your Recovery and Factory Image on the USB stick. If you want to use Recovery to install Win8 some day, you switch back to UEFI mode, boot the USB stick, and have it re-image the drive to factory state. To be safe, you may want a secondary Recovery backup, as described in this post.

Note that it really MUST be a USB flash drive working as a removable drive, since Recovery doesn't support booting from a USB HDD. That's why SanDisk flash drives don't work, they act as HDDs, not as removable drives (member bel90 shared that information in this thread).

Once you have that USB backup, this WIn7 install guide should cover everything, including the conversion to MBR, change of BIOS settings, SW Update, which drivers to install, and even ExpressCache. It looks very long because it covers many different models (AND because it covers both Win7 and Win8-delivered models), but it's rally not that much work. The only snafu is you really want to install Win7 from DVD (not USB) in order to avoid a boot problem caused by the ExpressCache drive. There are workarounds in case you don't have a DVD drive.

That said, of course making Win8 work for you is still by far the easiest solution. Personally I use the free Start Menu8 (from IObit) which works almost exactly like a Win7 start menu. Many are using Start8, which costs a few bucks. I do NOT recommend Pokki, though, which is really just nasty spamware intended to push other 3rd party apps.

 

dear dannemand
thanks a lot for your help & I will try to work with win8
but the thing is I work on some old programs that require win7 or win xp
and I will try to switch to win 7 if it necessary
but which version of win 7 will be more suitable for my laptop 64 or 86 ??
and again thanks a lot for your help guys

 

Don't discard Win8 before you even try running these programs in compatibility mode. Although this is not exactly new, remember, you can open that program proprieties, choose its compatibility, and run it that way permanently.

 

I tried the compatibility troubleshooting solution and it works sometimes but the program when it runs it run so slow with problems!!!!
any way I will try other version of this program
but can I upgrade win8 single language to pro easly from flash memory?(anew win8 copy)
or it will require additional work???

 

Don't use compatibility troubleshooting, right-click program proprieties, go to compatibility tab, experiment between versions, choose visual settings (this could relate to your slow issues), and select run as admin if needed.. Don't leave troubleshoot up to Windows if you can do it yourself.

I'm sure if you google you'll find that answer in minutes, what I'm wondering is.. Do you really need Win8 Pro or is it just a language issue?

 

Win7 64bit Home Premium is the one that came with my NP700Z3A. But you can use either. If you have more than 3GB RAM, you will need 64bit to take advantage of it. You need a matching Product Key, of course.

Skor78 is spot on about exhausting Win8's compatibility options. But if you have to make the switch, at least you can.

 

There are some old programs that don't like either Windows 7 or 8. The solution for this is VMplayer or similar and an old copy of Windows XP with its key so you can create a Windows XP virtual PC. There are also some less old programs that won't run properly unless you find some dll files that used to be included as part of the Windows installation.

I've done this so I can occasionally run some few old programs.

John