HUMOUR! + To install Windows 7 on an Acer Laptop with a pre-installed Windows 10 Home

Hello,

I am sure many of you wonderful people have seen questions relating to this - and if this has already been answered, then please don't hesitate to tell me to shut the hell up and do my homework on this forum (whilst, hopefully, pointing me in the right direction

)

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire 3 Laptop - 4GB of RAM, 1.1GHZ piece of **** processor and Windows 10 Home Pre-installed. I was fully aware of what I was buying - an attempts to downgrade from my mid level gaming beast to lead a more debt free life (if one can read through the lines

)

The point: I HATE Windows 10. With a passion. The design of it, everything. I LOVE Windows 7. I couldn't ask for a better OS.

I purchased a serial key and program download of Windows 7 professional from softwaregeeks.co.uk - so I could install it on this barely 3 day old laptop. Suffice to say, their response to why this install wasn't working was - 're-download the ISO image + NO REFUND..........' so, no luck *insert eye roll emoji here*

Originally, when loading from a bootable USB drive of Windows 7 - (followed the instructions to the T! FAT 32, GPT seperation etc) - it presented me with this ungodly error:

File: \$WINDOWS.-BT\Windows\system32\winload.efi

0xc0000428

Info: The digital signature for this file couldn't be verified.

I perused websites for a while - figured out that I needed to enable boot from F12. And all of a sudden, this **** of an error message dissipated. However, a security boot lock became enabled - so I killed it off with my weapon of choice, and then, finally - Windows 7 booted from my USB stick... I was so very excited, that I had managed to figure this issue out by myself.

Then, the Windows 7 start up screen simply wouldn't move beyond this... like stuck in some petty, never ending argument, looping in on itself until the end of time.

I had disabled the secure boot, set the password. Where so many before me had succeeded at this point, I have failed. And I am now clueless as to why.

So I figured I would message you good people (and hopefully entertain somewhat) about some trivial BS (in the grand scheme of things) in the hopes you could help me out and point out what it is I am not doing... I admit - I have had 4 tins of beer and feeling a little tipsy, however, I am still pretty coherent and want to get this working! so I don't have to pay the PC guy down the street £50 to sort this out for me when I KNOW there are people out there who can help me out! (P.S. I'm a full time MA Student - so, not in a full time job, hence the lack of enthusiasm for wanting to spend my monthly food budget on a tech guy!)

Any help welcome! And if you made it this far into the marathon of my words, then good on you - and secondly, thank you!!

Accepted answers

JackE

Wow. You jumped way ahead of me. 18.3 is the preferred Mint Cinnamon Sylvia version. The installation is fairly automatic so you shouldn't have to do much of anything. Below are the basic steps to follow if you're game, which you seem to be.

For now, you just install Linux alongside Win10 for a dual boot system. After it's up and running you can rearrange things so Win10 won't even show up if you don't want it to. Jack E/NJ

LINUXMINT
( 0) Pre-shrink Windows partition to desired unallocated space for Linux installation. Shrink it a lot if you want
( 1) Make bootable GPT partition/FAT32 format (default) USB stick from the Linux installation iso with Rufus, a freeware download.
( 2) Set BIOS supervisor password(SECURITY), disable secure boot(BOOT)& enable F12 Windows boot mgr (MAIN). Save BIOS settings & exit. May not be needed with some Linux installations like Mint.
( 3) Shutdown & insert bootable Linux stick
( 4) Turn back on while immediately tapping F12. Select Linux stick to run.
( 5) Preferrably select a default Linux install option
( 6) Follow on-screen instructions to install alongside Windows.
( 7) Let Linux automatically set & resize partitions for Linux & its swap. Adjust for more or less space only if absolutely necessary.
( 8) Shutdown & remove Linux stick.
( 9) Turn back on while tapping F2.
(10) Re-enable secure boot(BOOT) & select UEFI file as trusted(MAIN). Select HDD0, SSD0 or eMMC0, then <EFI>, then <ubuntu>, then grubx64.efi the UEFI file. Enter grubx64.efi in the space provided if selecting it doesn't automatically enter it. Save BIOS setting and exit.
(11) Boot into Windows. Then shutdown again.
(12) Turn back on while tapping F12 to select Linux grubx64.efi to run
(13) If desired, put grubx64.efi ahead of Windows boot manager in UEFI bootstrapper

All comments

JackE

If you liked Win7 as much as I did, you will probably like LinuxMint Cinnamon 18.3 just about as well. Mint can be loaded on a GPT-partition HDD with a UEFI bootstrapper. Win7 needs a legacy BIOS with an MBR partition HDD. While Win7 can be loaded with difficulty on Win10 hardware, some drivers will likely be a disappointing issue. Mint does a good job of loading just about all drivers from the getgo. In fact, it does a better job of installing on Win10 hardware than installing Win10.

Jack E/NJ

Sebaducks

Hi JackE

Thank you for your response!

I'm willing to give LinuxMint a go! But, I'm not sure as to what I'm doing wrong. I burnt the ISO image to USB - It goes through it's set up process, lots of Windows Run looking text - it ends on this message:

"Failed to Start the X Server (your graphics interface). It is likely that it is not set up correctly. Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem?" -- I select YES and it takes me to more text of which I cannot comprehend.

Any ideas on how to solve this? I just want to eradicate Windows 10 from this laptop! It's becoming quite the challenge! haha

Sebaducks

JackE said:

If you liked Win7 as much as I did, you will probably like LinuxMint Cinnamon 18.3 just about as well. Mint can be loaded on a GPT-partition HDD with a UEFI bootstrapper. Win7 needs a legacy BIOS with an MBR partition HDD. While Win7 can be loaded with difficulty on Win10 hardware, some drivers will likely be a disappointing issue. Mint does a good job of loading just about all drivers from the getgo. In fact, it does a better job of installing on Win10 hardware than installing Win10. Jack E/NJ

Further to this - the last screen I am left with is:

Welcome to Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa (GNU/Linux 3.19.0-32-generic x86_64)
*Documentation: http://www.linuxmint.com

Sebaducks

Sebaducks said:

JackE said:

If you liked Win7 as much as I did, you will probably like LinuxMint Cinnamon 18.3 just about as well. Mint can be loaded on a GPT-partition HDD with a UEFI bootstrapper. Win7 needs a legacy BIOS with an MBR partition HDD. While Win7 can be loaded with difficulty on Win10 hardware, some drivers will likely be a disappointing issue. Mint does a good job of loading just about all drivers from the getgo. In fact, it does a better job of installing on Win10 hardware than installing Win10. Jack E/NJ

Further to this - the last screen I am left with is:

Welcome to Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa (GNU/Linux 3.19.0-32-generic x86_64)
*Documentation: http://www.linuxmint.com

Apologies for the seperated messages here!

Also; when loading LinuxMint in non compatibility mode - it loads up (slowly, but gets there) and then instantly pops up with a message saying:

Cinnamon just crashed, you are running in fallback mode

Then I have to just restart the laptop and nothing responds...

JackE

Wow. You jumped way ahead of me. 18.3 is the preferred Mint Cinnamon Sylvia version. The installation is fairly automatic so you shouldn't have to do much of anything. Below are the basic steps to follow if you're game, which you seem to be.

For now, you just install Linux alongside Win10 for a dual boot system. After it's up and running you can rearrange things so Win10 won't even show up if you don't want it to. Jack E/NJ

LINUXMINT
( 0) Pre-shrink Windows partition to desired unallocated space for Linux installation. Shrink it a lot if you want
( 1) Make bootable GPT partition/FAT32 format (default) USB stick from the Linux installation iso with Rufus, a freeware download.
( 2) Set BIOS supervisor password(SECURITY), disable secure boot(BOOT)& enable F12 Windows boot mgr (MAIN). Save BIOS settings & exit. May not be needed with some Linux installations like Mint.
( 3) Shutdown & insert bootable Linux stick
( 4) Turn back on while immediately tapping F12. Select Linux stick to run.
( 5) Preferrably select a default Linux install option
( 6) Follow on-screen instructions to install alongside Windows.
( 7) Let Linux automatically set & resize partitions for Linux & its swap. Adjust for more or less space only if absolutely necessary.
( 8) Shutdown & remove Linux stick.
( 9) Turn back on while tapping F2.
(10) Re-enable secure boot(BOOT) & select UEFI file as trusted(MAIN). Select HDD0, SSD0 or eMMC0, then <EFI>, then <ubuntu>, then grubx64.efi the UEFI file. Enter grubx64.efi in the space provided if selecting it doesn't automatically enter it. Save BIOS setting and exit.
(11) Boot into Windows. Then shutdown again.
(12) Turn back on while tapping F12 to select Linux grubx64.efi to run
(13) If desired, put grubx64.efi ahead of Windows boot manager in UEFI bootstrapper

Sebaducks

Thank you so much Jack! I have installed Linux Mint 18.3 alongside Windows 10 and it is running perfectly. Asides from the lack of mainstream support (which is reasonable, considering its market ownership) - I LOVE Linux. It's simple, effective and resource efficient. Windows 10 still exists on the laptop, a safe move in case I need something windows based? Or shall I just eradicate the burden once and for all?

Thanks again!

Sebaducks

Thank you so much Jack! I have installed Linux Mint 18.3 alongside Windows 10 and it is running perfectly. Asides from the lack of mainstream support (which is reasonable, considering its market ownership) - I LOVE Linux. It's simple, effective and resource efficient. Windows 10 still exists on the laptop, a safe move in case I need something window

JackE

@Sebaducks >>> Windows 10 still exists on the laptop, a safe move in case I need something windows based? Or shall I just eradicate the burden once and for all?>>>

Congrats! But if you really gotta run a WinApp, search "wine" in software install mgr and install something to do that too.

Jack E/NJ

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