I have given up the ghost of trying to recover the functioning Win 7 system partition that I had before the aborted Win 10 upgrade on my desktop. I am now properly chastised and resolve to format that partition and do a clean install of Windows 7. Toward that end I have an image backup running that is taking the entire contents of the drive to an external drive for safekeeping (actually, in case I discover down the road that there are bits there that I still need). I am anticipating difficulty because the DVD that I have for Win 7 HPE is actually an upgrade version.
As (I think) I've posted elsewhere on Eileen's Lounge, I tried to create a Windows 7 system on a different internal HDD and failed because the installation procedure wants to see an old copy of Windows on the system to validate that the system qualifies for the upgrade. I do not have a functioning Windows on the SSD where I want to reinstall Win 7.
I DO have a crippled Windows 7 running from the HDD. By that I mean that Win 7 will boot but I have only a bare bones system without recognition of many of the system's components. This came about (I think) because, in order to to get around the previously installed Windows check, I had to choose the Custom (advanced) installation option. The user is warned not to do this because all will be lost and drivers et al must be dug up and fed to the Microsoft gods as tribute.
If - after formatting the SSD - I load the DVD and hard boot and come to the same test for a qualifying version of Windows to validate the upgrade, how do I get around that Catch-22 (Thank you, Mr. Heller!)?
If anyone can point me to an article or source of help for defeating this bug, I shall be forever in his/her debt.
TIA
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