Chosen Solution
I want to upgrade my my laptop from running windows home vista to running windows 7 premium.
In my shop I’ve seen a few brands/models if you try to run a Vista to Win7 upgrade it will fail. If this is happening, back up your data (usually everything is stored in your personal folder), do a clean install (run your win updates and install an anti-virus program like Microsoft Security Essentials / free), then copy your data back over. A good clean install is much better, this ensures that you don’t have clutter and junk left behind from Vista even if the upgrade to Win7 would work. A last note, since you bought the Windows 7 discs, when you clean install Windows 7 be sure to leave the HP restore partition alone (the restore partitions are only about 2-4GB). This way if you decide to sell it later, you can just hit a key on boot up and factory restore it back to Vista and still keep your Windows 7 / bought disc/serial number.
F8 is usually for troubleshooting methods such safe mode last good known configuration. Once you have purchased a copy of windows 7, turn the computer on and hit f10 or f12 to go into the boot menu. You want to select cd/dvd rom to boot from. Your laptop will boot from the disk and go into setup mode. you need to format the drive first and install windows7. Follow the directions and you will have windows 7 loaded in atleast 30 minutes.
