installing win7 - how do you do this on a system with pre installed recovery partition??

[iapitte]

Hello everyone,  I have FZ11S sony laptop with a recovery partition pre installed with Vista. When I instal Win7 and it restarts at the end of the installation, the Vista recovery utility starts up and re-installs Vista! Ideally I would like to instal Win7 with Vista -having a multiboot system, but if thats not possible I would like some advise on how to deal with the recoevry utility problem.  Perhaps I have to delete it first before installing Win7, and format the hardisk also before install?

Thanks Ian

[tripodzid]

I am not sure if there is a way to delete the recovery tool for Vista, but I think there is an option where you can set it off.

_______________

Business is the game!!

[rich912]

Hi Ian,

If a roll back to the previous OS takes place this is usually because the install has failed due to incompatible hardware and possibly has nothing to do with the HDD recovery partition.

Did you run the Win 7 upgrade advisor prior to install and if so where any devices reported as not compatible?

Assuming that you are trying a ‘clean’ install, opt for an ‘in-place upgrade’ instead – this may work and will retain all compatible drivers, utilities and pre-installed software.

You can opt to delete the HDD recovery partition during a factory reset at some stage in the recovery procedure (using either the HDD recovery partition or your recovery disks) but it is not advisable.

Rich

[iapitte]

Hi all,

               thanks for the input all,  but I'm still having problems.  I checked compatability for 7 and there is really no problem with the notebooks hardware.  And the sony support do list win 7 applications for the notebook so there should not be a problem updating to Win 7.

When the notebook re-installs Vista I hav'nt seen any option to delete the recovery partition. Is this process different than the factory re-install?

I have tried to format and delete the recovery partition to get rid of the recovery utility but this does not seem possible?

Advise greatly appreciated.

Ian

[rich912]

Hi iapitte,

You should be able to delete the recovery partition by choosing a ‘Custom’ recovery when booting from your recovery disks – there you should find an option to remove the partition.

Or you could use a third party utility such as Partition Magic.

Go for it by all means but I am not convinced that this is the problem.

Rich

[iapitte]

Hi all,  I don't have recovery disks, would there be any difference?  Essentially the laptop is sony recognised as being suitable for upgrading to Windows, so I don't think there should be any problem.  I thought of getting another hardisk and installing win 7 on that but it seems like a waste as I have a hardisk already - its just I can't get 7 to stay on it because the recovery utility always interupting the final setup procedure.  I'll try and see if the Bios can do something to get rid of the recovery partition.

Ian

[iapitte]

At last I managed to get Win 7 installed!  I managed it seems to delete the recovery files from the hidden partition using disk manager,  I could not however delete the partition itself there,  but then 7 could at last install itself to operate with the recovery utility gone and as it did so it deleted the hidden partition as well.  Now I just have to download the Sony utilitied and device drivers.  Should not be a problem I think, well see.

Thanks all

Ian