Classic Start or Start8 both take most of the pain out of Windows 8, making it look and feel pretty much like Windows 7. I'm no fan of Windows 8 either, but with Classic Start on my 2 test computers, it's not that bad. There're a lot of reasons why going back to Windows 7 on a laptop made for Windows 8 is not a good idea, so installing Classic Start (which is free) is the lesser of the two evils.
Good luck.
I just got an HP Pavilion G7 2240us in and it has the dreaded Windows 8 on it. I have Windows 7 Pro 64 bit to put on it, but my experience so far with trying to downgrade back to 7 on a few other brands of laptops has been bad so far. I tried this on a Samsung, installing a new 240GB SSHD into a brand new Samsung out of the box notebook, than when I powered it on it would go directly to the BIOS screen without me even pressing F2 and that's it. I could not change the boot settings in the BIOS to put from disc or anything. I thought I would ask on here before running into the same problem with this HP G7 2240us. I have a 480GB Solid state drive along with 8GB of ram to put into this laptop. HP's website has no drivers listed either for Windows 7. What a mess Microsoft has made with this whole "Everyone must love Windows 8" stuff...... Any help would be appreciated! Thanks for reading this over.

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