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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:54 pm 
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Hi, You may recall on some earlier posts that I have what I believe was once a Windows 7 Computer that may have been upgraded to Windows 8 but the more I work with it, it appears to be a dual boot computer which can be booted to Windows 8 or Windows 7. When it is booted to 7, it has a disc capacity of 25gb used and 102gb available for a total of 127gb. When booted to 8, it has 20gb used and 782 available for a total ot 802gb.

What I would like to know is whether or not it is possible to move at least 500gb from windows 8 over to Windows 7 and if so, how I would go about doing it.


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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:18 pm 
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Yes it can be done but is a bit complicated. To be honest I'd leave it as is as long as you have sufficient free space on the Windows 7 boot. In most cases 127GB total drive space is enough for Windows 7.

If you could post a screen shot of the drive allotment in from Drive Management I could have a better idea as to what you would need to do.

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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 10:20 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Yes it can be done but is a bit complicated. To be honest I'd leave it as is as long as you have sufficient free space on the Windows 7 boot. In most cases 127GB total drive space is enough for Windows 7.

If you could post a screen shot of the drive allotment in from Drive Management I could have a better idea as to what you would need to do.


Hi Jay.......please tell me where to go to find the "drive allotment in from Drive Management"


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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:11 pm 
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Sorry but I'm going to bed. I'll answer this tomorrow...

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 11:45 am 
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Allyson wrote:

Hi Jay.......please tell me where to go to find the "drive allotment in from Drive Management"


In Windows 7, follow these steps to view the current drive allotment. Take a screen shot and post it here so that Jay can provide some advice on how to change things if you wish to proceed.
https://support.dynabook.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=4008318#:~:text=How%20To%20Access%20Disk%20 Management%20in%20Windows%207,displayed%20showing%20all%20the%20drives%20detected%20by%20windows.

-steve

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 12:15 pm 
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sboots wrote:
Allyson wrote:

Hi Jay.......please tell me where to go to find the "drive allotment in from Drive Management"


In Windows 7, follow these steps to view the current drive allotment. Take a screen shot and post it here so that Jay can provide some advice on how to change things if you wish to proceed.
https://support.dynabook.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=4008318#:~:text=How%20To%20Access%20Disk%20 Management%20in%20Windows%207,displayed%20showing%20all%20the%20drives%20detected%20by%20windows.

-steve

Ya, what Steve said. ;)

Hey Steve, Hope you don't mind but I edited the link in your last post as it was 'stretching' the width of the page.

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 1:21 pm 
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jaylach wrote:

Hey Steve, Hope you don't mind but I edited the link in your last post as it was 'stretching' the width of the page.


Not at all. :-) It didn't affect my display, so I left it as is when posted.

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 1:28 pm 
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sboots wrote:
jaylach wrote:

Hey Steve, Hope you don't mind but I edited the link in your last post as it was 'stretching' the width of the page.


Not at all. :-) It didn't affect my display, so I left it as is when posted.

Probably was due to my running a DPI of 250%. At a 4K resolution that DPI is pretty common on a large display.

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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2022 4:48 pm 
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sboots wrote:
Allyson wrote:

Hi Jay.......please tell me where to go to find the "drive allotment in from Drive Management"


In Windows 7, follow these steps to view the current drive allotment. Take a screen shot and post it here so that Jay can provide some advice on how to change things if you wish to proceed.
https://support.dynabook.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=4008318#:~:text=How%20To%20Access%20Disk%20 Management%20in%20Windows%207,displayed%20showing%20all%20the%20drives%20detected%20by%20windows.

-steve


I had to install Paint Shop Pro on the Windows 7 Pro Partition of the computer so it took me a while to get the pic you wanted. What I would like to do is end up with as little as possible size on The Windows 8 partition.


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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2022 6:26 pm 
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A couple of possibilities.

1) If you never want to use Windows 8.1 You could just delete that partition then expand the Windows 7 partition to take the then unallocated space. This would take manipulation of the Windows Boot Loader to do properly.

2) Shrink the Windows 8 partition to around the same as the Windows 7 partition. This would leave ~675GB unallocated space that could be made to a new simple partition for data storage that could be shared between Windows 7 and 8. This is what I'd recommend.

3) You could use third party software to shrink the Windows 8 partition and then move the now empty space to the Windows 7 partition. This involves some risks and, no insult intended, but likely above your pay grade.

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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2022 11:43 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
A couple of possibilities.

1) If you never want to use Windows 8.1 You could just delete that partition then expand the Windows 7 partition to take the then unallocated space. This would take manipulation of the Windows Boot Loader to do properly.

2) Shrink the Windows 8 partition to around the same as the Windows 7 partition. This would leave ~675GB unallocated space that could be made to a new simple partition for data storage that could be shared between Windows 7 and 8. This is what I'd recommend.

3) You could use third party software to shrink the Windows 8 partition and then move the now empty space to the Windows 7 partition. This involves some risks and, no insult intended, but likely above your pay grade.


I like option 1 as I have no use for Windows 8 so if you can give me some idea of how to do it, I will give it a try.........step by step would be nice.


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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2022 12:42 pm 
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Allyson wrote:
jaylach wrote:
A couple of possibilities.

1) If you never want to use Windows 8.1 You could just delete that partition then expand the Windows 7 partition to take the then unallocated space. This would take manipulation of the Windows Boot Loader to do properly.

2) Shrink the Windows 8 partition to around the same as the Windows 7 partition. This would leave ~675GB unallocated space that could be made to a new simple partition for data storage that could be shared between Windows 7 and 8. This is what I'd recommend.

3) You could use third party software to shrink the Windows 8 partition and then move the now empty space to the Windows 7 partition. This involves some risks and, no insult intended, but likely above your pay grade.


I like option 1 as I have no use for Windows 8 so if you can give me some idea of how to do it, I will give it a try.........step by step would be nice.


It may take me a bit to give the info as I'm going to have to look fore some software that will be needed. In the mean time you need to be ready to do a system image of the entire disk, both Windows 7 and 8 as this could fail. The Windows boot loader is probably on the Windows 8 partition so we will need to copy it to the Windows 7 partition before killing Windows 8 hence the system image if the process fails.

To be honest, since you don't want Windows 8, and if you have a Windows 7 key code to use, and not much installed, the easiest route, and safest, would be to just wipe the drive and install Windows 7 clean using the entire drive. The current Windows 7 key code should do just fine.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2022 4:29 pm 
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Read the above post first...

If you decide to go the route of wiping the drive and installing Windows 7 clean you will need the following software. Get the free version.
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/#comparison

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2022 11:36 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Read the above post first...

If you decide to go the route of wiping the drive and installing Windows 7 clean you will need the following software. Get the free version.
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/#comparison


Hi Jay, I'm going to have to get back to you on this as I am unable to find any of my Windows 7 Install discs. They should be along with Windows 98, 2000, ME and XP stuff but I must have stored them somewhere else.


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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2022 1:17 am 
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I would imagine that you can still download install media. I'll look for a link tomorrow.

And I goofed on a previous post. You do not need the software I linked unless you do NOT want to do a clean install.

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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2022 1:59 pm 
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Here is a link to download Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate or Home. Get the one to which your key code applies.

Home:
https://archive.org/details/windows-7-home-premium-32-or-64bit
Pro:
https://archive.org/details/windows7professionalx64
Ultimate:
https://archive.org/details/windows7ultimatex64_201912

I have used archive.org before and trust.

If the system has a CD/DVD burner you would just right click on the downloaded ISO file and select to burn. If no CD/DVD burner you may be able to use an external but it should be something from which you can boot but that is probably not totally necessary, just best.

If you do the clean install I DO suggest that you do an image backup of the entire current system in case something goes south.

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 Post Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2022 5:03 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Here is a link to download Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate or Home. Get the one to which your key code applies.

Home:
https://archive.org/details/windows-7-home-premium-32-or-64bit
Pro:
https://archive.org/details/windows7professionalx64
Ultimate:
https://archive.org/details/windows7ultimatex64_201912

I have used archive.org before and trust.

If the system has a CD/DVD burner you would just right click on the downloaded ISO file and select to burn. If no CD/DVD burner you may be able to use an external but it should be something from which you can boot but that is probably not totally necessary, just best.

If you do the clean install I DO suggest that you do an image backup of the entire current system in case something goes south.


Hi Jay, I found my Windows 7 discs and did a clean install and the computer now boots up to Windows 7 Pro with Windows 8 gone but I now have another problem, I am unable to connect to the Internet. Nothing was changed and the Ethernet cable still runs from the computer to the Comcast ISP box. There are 2 other computers connected to the Comcast ISP box and they both connect to the net ok. Any thoughts on what might be the cause?


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 Post Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2022 5:49 pm 
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On another computer you will need to go to the manufacturer's site and download device drivers for the specific system unless the system came with a driver install disk which is unlikely.

What is the make and model?

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 10:34 am 
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jaylach wrote:
On another computer you will need to go to the manufacturer's site and download device drivers for the specific system unless the system came with a driver install disk which is unlikely.

What is the make and model?


It is a Dell Vostro 3900 Windows 7 64bit Service Tag: 66S8V62

I went to the Dell web site but got hung up when it asked for the driver name


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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 12:39 pm 
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Go to https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us?app=drivers and enter the service tag then search.
Attachment:
dell1.jpg
dell1.jpg [ 145.44 KiB | Viewed 5477 times ]


On the following select 'Windows 7 64bit' as the operating system then 'all' for category. That is all you need.
Attachment:
dell2.jpg
dell2.jpg [ 135.48 KiB | Viewed 5477 times ]


Scroll down and you will find a list of available downloads.
Attachment:
dell3.jpg
dell3.jpg [ 471.69 KiB | Viewed 5477 times ]


Download everything to a flash drive and then install each on the Vostro. Unless you have issues after installing all the other drivers I would not bother with the BIOS even though it is listed as critical unless it can be done through Windows.

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 2:26 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Go to https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us?app=drivers and enter the service tag then search.
Attachment:
dell1.jpg


On the following select 'Windows 7 64bit' as the operating system then 'all' for category. That is all you need.
Attachment:
dell2.jpg


Scroll down and you will find a list of available downloads.
Attachment:
dell3.jpg


Download everything to a flash drive and then install each on the Vostro. Unless you have issues after installing all the other drivers I would not bother with the BIOS even though it is listed as critical unless it can be done through Windows.


I downloaded all the links but it would only install the last two. After adding the two that worked, I got an error message 651 when I tried to connect. Said it was related to the modem


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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 3:11 pm 
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Reset the modem by unplugging for a couple of minutes then plug back in. I don't know if the system has wireless but make sure to connect via a cord to the modem.

As to failed driver installs Windows MAY have already installed better drivers but did you try the chipset driver? Sometimes other drivers won't install until after the chipset.

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 6:38 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Reset the modem by unplugging for a couple of minutes then plug back in. I don't know if the system has wireless but make sure to connect via a cord to the modem.


Clicked on a lot of stuff. It is a wireless system and is connected by cords as well. In any event, I am now able to get on line, and I have a local disc "C" which has the current Windows 7 System with 764gb of free space and a local disc "D" which has Windows 7 System Old with 100gb of free space. Along with this came some new problems. The only browser that I was able to install was Google Chrome and after getting that working, some of the sites I try to go to give me a message that they are insecure, and that includes Computer Haven. Same message when I tried to install Mozilla. Most sites open right up like Amazon, Youtube, Ebay, Facebook but I would like to find out why I get that insecure message.


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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 6:52 pm 
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Don't know why you are getting that message.

You should be able to install Firefox as a browser but you will need to make sure that you have the update KB4474419. Have you ran Windows Updates yet? Updates from before Windows 7 reached end of life are probably still available.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-version-100-on-windows-7

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:22 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Don't know why you are getting that message.

You should be able to install Firefox as a browser but you will need to make sure that you have the update KB4474419. Have you ran Windows Updates yet? Updates from before Windows 7 reached end of life are probably still available.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-version-100-on-windows-7


I do not have KB4474419. I have not run windows updates because all the links I have tried take me to that message pic above so perhaps you can give me a link that will allow me to download KB4474419.

I have also tried to download Microsoft edge and nothing works when I go there.


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