Hoping to run Win 7 on Win 8 partition (or am I in denial)

May 23, 2013 11:34 AM

A week ago a well intentioned doofus dropped my Asus N53S, Win7x64 Pro. She was a champ. Snapped the motherboard, but I safely extracted the harddrive. The venue of its demise bought me a Asus N76VX which has the dreadful Win 8, but 2 TB harddrive with lots of partition space. Is there any way I can "run" my old machine from its harddrive in an emulated Win 7 environment on this new beast?

I was told to try Hyper-V, which despite research was not native to this particular Win 8x64 system. Hyper-V won't boot and it appears (at first brush anyway) to be beyond my skill level... and it looks like it just doesn't want to work anyway & throws errors at boot. I have gazillions of hours and resources invested in the software now enclosed former brain of the old system. So, I hope for some virtualization/emulation magic. Thanks!

posted by moonbird to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Do you have the Windows Authentication Key for the copy that ran on your old laptop? If so you can download the officials .isos, burn them to DVD, and just nuke the new laptop and install Windows 7 on there. That's what I'd do.
posted by Aizkolari at 11:36 AM on May 23, 2013

Response by poster: Aizkolari, I spoke with support at Asus, and this particular model doesn't support Win7. A number of drivers haven't been made for it, etc.
posted by moonbird at 11:47 AM on May 23, 2013

Response by poster: (that's why I'm looking for some way to virtualize or emulate the environment)
posted by moonbird at 12:04 PM on May 23, 2013

I'm guessing you don't have Windows 8 Pro edition? I think that's the version that comes with Hyper-V. It's just something you enable in "Programs and Features" if it's available.

If you go with virtualization of your old system, it doesn't much matter if you use Hyper-V, VMware, or VirtualBox. The term you're looking for is "physical to virtual" or "p2v". Some instructions for Hyper-V, but Google any of the platforms and you'll find similar steps with different tools.
posted by sbutler at 1:58 PM on May 23, 2013

Response by poster: Nope, despite all the pizzaz around this model it's just straight Win 8. Thanks for the term help- it's a first time I've had to experience this kind of mess. Several wares are incompatible w/ 8 (remote sound mixer, etc), would just live to try to run them. Is it worth looking into an upgrade to Pro?
posted by moonbird at 3:06 PM on May 23, 2013

I don't have much experience with it, but VirtualBox is free and relatively stable. I wouldn't try to play any games through it, but running Pro programs shouldn't be too difficult (unless they also need to connect to hardware through USB, which might be iffy with any virtualized solution).

Instructions for p2v on VirtualBox. It's a little roundabout; not sure if that's going to be above your technical level or not.

IDK what a Win8 upgrade to Pro gets you, or if it's really worth it.
posted by sbutler at 3:15 PM on May 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: This looks doable- with sufficient attention to each iota of detail- will have to read more when I'm back home. I'm stoked for some hope here :)
posted by moonbird at 3:58 PM on May 23, 2013

If Windows 8 doesn't work on that laptop, what makes you think it's going to work in a VM on that laptop. The driver issues will still exist.
posted by brownrd at 4:38 AM on May 24, 2013

Response by poster: Brownrd, it's a Win 8 laptop that's the new one, it's the Win 7 environment I'm trying to get going on a partition.
posted by moonbird at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2013

Response by poster: Follow up: I've kept the disk image of the Win7 on a partition and am making my way through the dreadful Win8 using the ClassicShell emulator. At least I get my familiar navigation back!
posted by moonbird at 10:11 AM on June 26, 2013