V3 772g SSD Install questions

Shenya
Shenya Member Posts: 27 Enthusiast WiFi Icon

I have owned my 772g -9653 for nearly 3 years and it is so slow getting into a usable state in Windows 8. I never upgraded to 8.1 since I read so many issues with doing so on this particular model, including a need to upgrade the BIOS (in my case 1.08) to a newer one that basically broke the machine. I just slapped an SSD in an old Windows 7 Acer desktop (old drive died completely) and used a Windows 10 USB stick to jump straight in with a clean install, inputting the Win 7 key from the side when asked for Win 10 key. All worked swimmingly.

 

The questions with regard to the 772g are:

 

1) I have seen people put the SSD where existing HD is and move old HD to 2nd bay then report that old HD still comes up first. Is the current HD actually in slot 2? I'm actually leaning toward using mSATA, since even though more expensive than SSD, the price of the stupid caddy actually makes SSD more expensive than mSATA. Will doing this ensure this is the first drive seen?

 

2) I cannot get into BIOS with DEL at startup or restart, I have to use the settings option in Win 8 to restart into BIOS. Will this be an issue when I install an SSD? I intend to put the SSD in and install fresh to it whilst leaving the existing drive intact so that if necessary I can boot the existing drive as it still is with Win 8.

 

3) Is there a setting I can make in BIOS so I can actually enter my BIOS by pressing DEL? What does one do if the HD goes down and cannot access Win 8 in order to use the reboot into BIOS option? It's annoying beyond belief, other machines I've had have always had some way of getting into BIOS without having to enter Win 8 first. I don't want to disable secure boot and enable legacy and find myself unable to boot my OS.

 

4) If I make a Win 10 USB Install media and install to the SSD, will it pull the key from my BIOS or will I need to use a tool to find my key first and use this manually?

 

5) Leaving the existing HD untouched and clean installing Win 10 to the SSD, will it spot the Win 8 os and provide me with a dual boot option?

 

6) Assuming I can clean install Windows 10 to the mSATA SSD, will it work on BIOS 1.08? I do not wish to update the BIOS on such a fussy laptop and be left with something that spontaneously shuts down then starts itself back up and causes regular BSODs. Currently my laptop does the sudden shut off/wait few seconds/start back up maybe 5 or 6 times a year.

 

7) Finally, if I use only a 120GB SSD will I be able to use the factory restore USB stick I made when I first got the machine to put the original Win 8 on it? On the desktop I initially tried to use the restore disks to put Win 7 factory back and it informed me that there would only be 96GB on the SSD and that it needed a minimum of 100Gb for Windows. Crazy, I am assuming that it was going to write a restore partition also and that is why only 96GB would be available, stupid considering I was using optical media for restoring therefore wouldn't need such a partition and restore partitions are no use if the drive went bad. I would at least like to have speed from SSD even if I can't use Win 10, and since I can't download Win 8 media and apparently Win 8.1 requires a different key (even though available for free to Win 8 users) I would need to use the USB backup I made rather than clean install of Win 8.

 

 

Thanks in advance, and yes I have read many threads here, none of which answer these questions properly. No one mentions when installing SSD about HD order and if they had to change anything and what they changed, or how they got to BIOS to make the changes or indeed to boot from a USB stick first, so it seems like they all were able to access their BIOS without first having to get into Windows. I would love to be able to put an SSD in, put installation USB in, install to that leaving existing drive untouched. I would love on restart or cold starts to hit a key to get a boot menu and choose to boot the old Win 8 drive instead if installing Win 10 doesn't make a boot menu for the 2 Windows installations (like XP and 7 used to)