Aspire TC-710 - Downgrade to Win7

[THRobinson]

My nephew went and bought a new Acer Aspire TC-710, which has Windows 10 on it, and immediately complained. He tried to downgrade it (the wrong way) and system is a mess.

After some effort figuring out how to get the BIOS to switch to Legacy, I finally got the Win7 disc he bought to load, however, as soon as it gets to the first screen acting for language, the keyboard and mouse won't load. Keyboard works in the BIOS, and both are connected by USB. Older mouse/keyboard as well, I use for installs and fixing so I don't have to unplug the ones from my PC.

I'm thinking that the USB drivers won't load when hits the Win7 screen and likely if Win7 installed it may not work anyways because I don't think Acer made drivers for it. But, since he ran out and bought Win7 I figured I'd ask here before I tell him he wasted his money.

- Will Win7 work on this system? How do I get the keyboard/mouse to work in the setup screens?
- If he hates Win10 that much, will Win8 work at least on here?
- Do I save myself the time and tell him to suck it up and use Win10?

 

[Stubbies]

Going to take a stab and say the mouse/keyboard were plugged into USB 3 slots and Win 7 doesn't have a USB 3 driver on the install disc hence not being seen. If the system has USB 2 slots use those instead.

 

[THRobinson]

Probably the case... I tested the rear and front USB ports. I 'might' have a USB PCI card kicking about, though before I try that, I'm hoping to hear if it will run or not on this PC. I know that the ASUS site for this system under driver support, only lists Win10. Win7 may simply not have mobo support for this model.

 

[Math Geek]

you will run into issues finding all the drivers for the system. acer only has win 10 drivers but this does not mean there are not win 7 ones out there.

but this will take some effort on your part to get em all tracked down and installed. i do this from time to time in my business and am about 75% successful on newer hardware.

if you can get the mouse/keyboard issue resolved and win 7 installed, then run windows update and see what drivers it finds. all the missing ones you'll have to seek out one by one. for example you'll want to identify the sound chip on the mobo and go to that manufacturer and see what they have for drivers and so on. you can also try win vista and win 8 drivers if available and see if they work. you may have to edit some ini files to make it work but it is possible.

it's not easy and can take some serious time and effort but you might get most of it working and if the pc gods on on your side that day, you might get it all working. good luck with it as i know how much fun it is.

 

[THRobinson]

Thanks... though been about 9 months, already got it sorted.

Installed Win10, and used one of those apps that you install to make it look like Win7. Classic Shell? Maybe? Been a while but, nephew is up and running.

Which is good... looks like Microsoft is puttin' the squeeze on Win7 users. Had to wipe out and install 2 older laptops this past summer, both had Win7x64 and I reinstalled Win7x64.

Hardware didn't change since last install, used the same discs as before as well... installation went from being 3h start-to-finish to about 18h just downloading updates. Same computer, same disc, same network... only explanation is that Microsoft is doing something on their end to make the install so unbearable you're forced to upgrade, which sucks because the laptops were old and wouldn't run Win10 properly anyways.

Makes me wish I knew how to use Linux.

 

[Math Geek]

lol didn't notice the date and for some reason this popped up as a new thread for me.

glad it worked out. classicshell is a nice way to make win 10 look like win 7 for sure. i use it myself.

and i also believe MS has purposely messed up win update for win 7/8/vista..... there are ways around it but the average user won't know this and will get mad and upgrade like MS wants them to.

 

[THRobinson]

Same happened with XP when Win8 came out... use to install fine on older systems, same system same disc and installations went from being a few hours to the entire weekend wasted.

I understand no longer supported, which is fine, I don't expect updates... but having paid for the software, I should still be able to use it on the hardware it was purchased for without all the issues. :S

 

[Math Geek]

i have an install disk of them that's been updated. so only updates from last few weeks are missing.

saves a long time not having to run update right away 6 times over multiple hours. i install OS's enough that was worth the effort to keep em updated.