Greetings, I have never posted in this forum but am in need of help from those with more knowledge than I. I have a dell Inspiron 17r se (7720) laptop that came with basic windows 8 (not pro). I hate it and have purchased the windows 7 ultimate with service pack. I have been searching online for how to go about installing this new system without losing all my programs (Microsoft office 2010 mainly) or my files. I have seen conflicting information about how to do this so I turn to the powers of ARFCOM for a tutorial. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. If you need further information regarding system just ask.

I think there is a win7 facelift for win8 that you can download from MS. The way I understood it it makes it function like your old win 7 machines.

I understand that... Already bought the software.

According to this terribly formatted webpage, only Pro comes with downgrade rights. I don't think there's any other way to downgrade and keep your installed programs, so it looks like you're just going to have to do a fresh Win7 install.

There is FREE software that emulates the look & feel of Win7 or XP! It's called Classic Shell. Give it a try!

Actually, the part of Win8 under the hood is better than Win7. The user interface part sucks. It sucks bad. The people responsible for the Win8 user interface need to be fired, blacklisted and end up living in a cardboard box.

Just add Classic Shell (it's free as posted above) and turn off active corners in the Classic Shell setup. You will have the best of both.

Back up your data, install 7 and start over.

Don't worry about losing office 2010 ( unless you paid for it already), just sign up for a Microsoft Outlook account and you get Office Online for free.

Or, sell that windows 7 disk and key and set up the desktop on 8. Windows 8 Desktop is like Windows 7 on steroids.

I went the opposite direction, and upgraded to 8.1, and never looked back.

That simply means you can use the same license to run Windows 7 or 8.1, it doesn't mean there's a way to migrate back to 7 from 8.  Like others have said, either do a fresh 7 install or download one of the freeware start menu programs for 8.

If it were me, I'd try Classic Shell and see if you can't live with Win 8 for now.    Then wait for Win 9 upgrade.

This is accurate.

The way I look at it, 8 is the way MS is going. You're going to have to get used to it, or be left behind. In all reality, 8.1 is not a massive change like people make it out to be.

But you can't stand up in front of a group of people and scream "Meh."  Gotta throw a propper tantrum!

This. I put Classic Shell over Win8 and it works well.

How much does Windows 7 cost, the original install? I just might do it anyway.

About $99 for Home Premium 64 Bit.

I got the Student Upgrade disk from my college. Will this work to downgrade from Win 8?

I've never known a way to upgrade (or down grade) Windows and keep your programs. I'm honestly surprised that no one has suggested to look up your MS Office product key. It was in the help menu last I remember. After that you just get the same Office.exe as the version on your Win 8 machine, install (it'll give you a 30 day trial in typical Microsoft fashion) and enter in your old product key (cause you should've written it down before you started the 7 install).

Fresh installs are best. A upgrade disk can be used for a fresh install (install initially, then upgrade the fresh install as the system only checks for a previous version of Windows, not a valid version). Takes up a lot of space though (my "upgrade" 7 Ultimate OS took up 27 GB after the install, takes less than 14 GB as a fresh install).

I haven't been impressed with Windows 8.1. My wife has a 3 month old Dell with i7…I can still boot my mid-2010 MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo) into 7 quicker than she can boot into 8. Microsoft is down in a rut with truly great OSes every other release for the last 16 years now it seems.

Say what you want about Win8, the under the hood part is good. I've had this laptop since 11/12/12 with Win8 (not 8.1), it gets used all day every day and gets rebooted maybe every couple weeks and has probably went over a month a couple times. I just had my first BSOD on it tonight.

Downgrading WinOS is not possible, but upgrading is certainly possible as long as you follow the MS guidelines.  As far as your inability to boot 8 fast, that seems like a personal problem; I've had Win8 builds that cold boot to desktop in under 10 seconds with SSD drives.

No, Windows 8.1 Professional allows you to downgrade to 7 Pro.