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I did exactly the same for the same reasons. I think as long as you have the recovery partition, you should be able to restore in the worst case scenario. I did a full-on wipe (diskpart clean to remove all partitions) and then repartition, so if it hadn't worked I'd have been so out of luck without the recovery disks!

Just so you know, dual booting 7 and 8 works flawlessly so I'd suggest extracting you Windows 8 key before you do the upgrade process (Belarc Advisor dug this out for me). That way you can keep the licence for what you paid for - my guess is that Win 8 will be a lot better by service pack 3 and then you can reinstall it if needed. To be honest the key is actually embedded in the bios, but having it physically is just an extra safety step. Also, please, for your peace of mind, burn the recovery dvd's or a recovery image to USB before you start. I work with computers for a living and I was still a little nervous as I wiped out everything on the computer, not knowing whether the drivers for Windows 7 would work!

Also, for the recovery partition, if you have a Windows 8 disk (any windows 8 disk) or an existing windows 8 machine, you should be able to create a windows 8 recovery disk / usb which should allow you to restore as I believe there is normally an option for "recover from machine image" or something similar in the advanced options. Finally, if all else fails, you can order recovery media from HP, but it does cost £30 or so for something which should be provided with the computer. T.

Registered solely for the purpose of resolving this problem for people having done this myself this weekend! First of all, before trying this make sure you backup (rule 1 of I.T.)!!!i HP provide a utility to create restore media - you need 5 DVDs and about 2 hours but gives you peace of mind you can restore to how you were if needed. The things to be aware of when you do the install are that the wireless and wired network devices need drivers to work. This means you either need a separate computer to download / burn them, or to download them to USB before you wipe Windows 8. So, go into device manager, find the name and model of the wireless and wired network adapters and then find the windows 7 software for them from the HP site. The way I did this, was to search for "hardware name" pavilion windows 7 so for example, the wi-fi adapter is a Ralink 5930gt or something similar, so you google Ralink 5930gt pavilion windows 7 and then download the relevant service pack. You need to do the same for every piece of hardware in your computer. Then install windows 7 and download Windows 7 drivers for these pieces of hardware from similas hp machines. Note that pretty much every piece of hardware in the 2210sa is in other HP machines which have at one point or another run windows 7 so HP do have drivers for every piece of hardware, but you have to download them by pretending to own a different model. From my hardware scan, the things you needed were Ralink RT5390R 802.11bgn Wi-Fi Adapter Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller IDT High Definition Audio CODEC Realtek PCIe Card Reader (this was tricky - the Windows 8 drivers actually worked on Windows 7 - couldn't find any others that did) Intel® 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family (direct from Intel) Intel HD4000 graphics drivers Intel® USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Finally, to get the function buttons working the way you expect, you need to download the HP Quick Launch software for Windows 7. Anyway, hope that helps someone. Mine seems to be up and running perfectly, though I am installing Windows 8 back into a separate partition (and without the bloatware provided by HP) since I paid for it, and I figure I may as well keep a copy for when the software I need to use gets upgraded to Win8. Cheers T.