[Q] Downgrading to 7, drivers compatibility

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You will have to excuse me if this has already been asked and answered somewhere. But I'm really pissed off at the moment and could easily kill all the developers who worked on Windows 8. To cut long story short, Win8 has caused me a lot of problems and I wish to downgrade to win7. So here's my question. I have an Asus laptop which has drivers only for Windows 8 (I realized this too late). I'm wondering if I can run Win7 normally with generic drivers that are not laptop-specific?

Any helpful answer is greatly appreciated.

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While I'm curious about these problems you mention, in actual answer to your question, it entirely depends on the hardware in your laptop. Stuff that Win7 supports natively with generic drivers, such as USB2, typical mice and keyboards, SATA HDDs and SSDs, and so on will work out of the box. Some components, such as the video card, will partially work with generic drivers but you'll want to download Win7 drivers for that hardware to get full features. Other hardware, such as USB3 ports, WiFi, and any sort of touchscreen, will almost certainly have Win7 drivers available but may not work at all until those drivers are installed (as the drivers probably won't be included in a standard Win7 install image). It's pretty unlikely that any of the hardware in the laptop will *only* have Win8 drivers, but you may have to go hunt down the correct drivers from non-Asus sites, or find older Asus laptops that have the same hardware but were supported with Win7.

Re: [Q] Downgrading to 7, drivers compatibility

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Thank you for your answer. And about my problem. The instant I log in, windows automatically logs me out, as if it cannot start explorer.exe and userinit.exe. I tried EVERYTHING, check disk, reset, repair, I cannot enter safe mode as I need to log in to enable that (why oh why did they have to remove F8 on boot?). The only thing that's left is clean install. I never had such problems with Win7 and earlier versions.

Edit:
I'm curious about the difference between drivers for graphic card from asus' website and nvidia's website. Does Asus alter drivers in any way?

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The drivers from NVidia will actually be BETTER than the ones from ASUS. The ASUS ones wont be updated as frequently. Otherwise the ones from ASUS are just NVidia's ones repackaged



I have never heard of your issue before though.

Actually, that depends... if the machine supports switchable graphics (say, Intel integrated as well as NVidia), you'll need the correct drivers to support that switching. Just installing the NVidia drivers will work, though, and it's true that they'll likely be more up to date.

NVidia's reference drivers for mobile devices also tend to be really buggy in my experience, though - things like preventing the computer from entering sleep or hibernate, or running the fan too much (even when not needed) and wasting battery life. They seem to be un-optimized for mobile machines, which OEMs sometimes fix for their specific models.

Re: [Q] Downgrading to 7, drivers compatibility

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Originally Posted by SixSixSevenSeven

The drivers from NVidia will actually be BETTER than the ones from ASUS. The ASUS ones wont be updated as frequently. Otherwise the ones from ASUS are just NVidia's ones repackaged



I have never heard of your issue before though.

If you google a bit, you'll see quite a number of people having similar or same issues, as a matter of fact. And no solution for the problem except a fresh install.

Originally Posted by GoodDayToDie

Actually, that depends... if the machine supports switchable graphics (say, Intel integrated as well as NVidia), you'll need the correct drivers to support that switching. Just installing the NVidia drivers will work, though, and it's true that they'll likely be more up to date.

NVidia's reference drivers for mobile devices also tend to be really buggy in my experience, though - things like preventing the computer from entering sleep or hibernate, or running the fan too much (even when not needed) and wasting battery life. They seem to be un-optimized for mobile machines, which OEMs sometimes fix for their specific models.

Yes, that's my case. I have both Intel and NVidia. As far as I'm concerned, I don't mind not having regular updates, or updates whatsoever if the drivers are stable and working.
By the way, thanks to you I searched for older Asus' laptops with the same hardware with Win7 drivers and found one. So now I have pretty much everything of importance working (ethernet, wifi, graphics card, etc.), though most of the Asus' software doesn't work as it claims my laptop is not made by them. Silly laptop specific OS restrictions.

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