Robert in CA wrote:
You said all I needed was an ISO but now
your saying your not sure. As I stated I'm not
going to risk the 8500 in any of this. It's not
worth it.

I'm not exactly following you,.....

Are you saying you want me to put the ISO file
on a DVD-R disc? using Image Burn on the 8500?
or are you saying put the file on the Patriot and put
in downloads on the 780 and then create the file?

Which do you want me to do?

Also, how do I turn off the Win 10 drive,... I've been
doing so much I don't remember know how to
locate it again.

Robert



If the ISO file was sitting on your 8500, you transfer it
to the 780 hard drive and its "Not Genuine" C: drive. Your
Downloads folder over there, isn't going anywhere, so
you put the Windows ISO file on the 780.

This might require copying the ISO file onto the Patriot
USB stick and carrying the USB stick over to the 780
so you can copy it onto the 780. You might not have
"File Sharing" set up on your machines (which would
make the job easier).

Once the Windows 7 ISO file is over on the 780, you
grab a copy of the OSFMount program, start it running,
go to the File menu and navigate to your Downloads
folder. You select the Windows ISO.

The OSFMount program will show in its status window,
that the file is now mounted. Now, go to File Explorer,
open the new virtual DVD drive you see in there, and
double click the Setup.exe to start a Repair Install.
The Upgrade Advisor should grind for a few minutes,
then tell you it will Repair Install, keeping your
programs and keeping your user data. And the
install will then happen.

THis assumes that the Windows 7 with the black screen,
continues to run long enough for Setup.exe to do its job.
Once the grace period runs out, the "table manners" of
the OS will degrade - it can shut the machine down
no matter what you're doing, without using a
clean shutdown either. I've never tried to Repair Install
a "Not Genuine" OS before, so I don't know whether the
Setup.exe can override the half-hour timer. (The copy
of Windows 7 I run in the Not Genuine state, is an
Enterprise version, and it runs for half-an-hour
before it shuts down.)

*******

Enter the BIOS using F2.

Select the Drives entry.

Find the window with SATA 1,2,3,4, and ESATA.
You want (perhaps) SATA 1 and SATA 2 turned
on (HDD and optical drive), while SATA 3 (Win10)
remains unticked. That way, while the Repair
Install is happening, the Win10 disk will be
unaffected.

You've probably already set things up that way
anyway, and this is just a reminder. I think you
told me you were already running RAID ON and
SATA 1 and SATA 2 ticked.

Paul