Windows7 - Installed But Issues, Any Help?

I am an American studying in Germany (at a school taught in English). I downloaded the student upgrade from Germany (since my school's email doesn't provide me access to downloads in the US). Had to install a clean install since I went from Vista Ultimate to W7 Pro. Chose location, etc, and ended up with W7 installed fine.....with the entire OS in German. Normally I might be glad to have a forced way of learning more German, but I'm not nearly close enough to understand an OS in this language.

How the heck can I change it to English? Why during install couldn't I choose my language? As seen here (slide 3): http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install.asp there is a language choice. I appeared to only have the option to choose United States, English (USA) and US keyboard layout. And it came after all the installation took place, not before as indicated here. I didn't install using an ISO disk, just double clicked the desktop installer and chose custom (since upgrade wasn't allowed). Is there a way for me to change it or reinstall it and choose english? If I do the ISO disk, can I then choose language on install? Paying the upgrade to Ultimate seems absurd.

EDIT: is there a way I can get an English ISO, then simply enter the key provided to me from the German upgrade site? Does that work? Or does the key need to match the ISO?

The other big issue is that I had about 17GB free when I did this process, and now my hard drive is full?! Why did this happen? Is the entire vista system still sitting on my hard drive? if so, how can I go back (if I can't change language) or free up the space? Can I somehow boot Vista? I haven't even moved my files back to W7 off my external hard drive...


I have not yet entered my product key. Why is W7 working?

I sure hope this can be cleared up. I'm liking the speed on this, but I really can't do the German thing, and I need hard drive space! I will have to go back to Vista (if I still can....) and eat my 35 Euros if I can't fix this Please help if you have any suggestions. Thank you in advance!

 

If you are a student you can try to get the language pack and install it on your W7 Pro.

I wonder why you don't have much left on your drive if this was a clean install? How big of a drive is it?

 

Do language packs work in Win 7 Pro? I thought only Win 7 Ultimate supported that?

Jerome10,

What you did is a 'clean' install but chose to leave the Vista files on the HD. That is why you have no free space left (look inside some folder like 'old windows' or similar).

You can't do a clean install like you did by initiating it from the desktop. Burn the ISO (not the extracted files) to a DVD and boot from the DVD and choose install, custom and remove the all the partitions completely so that Windows 7 can setup your HD optimally (it will automatically make a small boot partition of about 100MB as the first partition and the remainder will be the C: drive).

There is no way to go back to Vista unless you have the restore disk (DVD) - if there was a HD based restore partition it is effectively useless as the MBR hooks have been removed by installing Windows 7 (and the restore shortcut keys won't work anymore to 'hook' into that hidden partition - if you had/have one).

Since you have your key code, try downloading (search the forums here for download links) the English version of the Windows you paid for. These are legal downloads - you just need to enter your key.

Good luck.

 

Vistalizator
http://www.froggie.sk/

Download the software and English language pack. Works on my Chinese W7 Home Premium to English.

 

You should be able to use the English ISO from the 'Legal Windows 7 download' threat in this forum. It should install English and the Key should work.

 

Thank you to everyone. I will give things a shot this weekend after exams are finished.

There is apparently a way to possibly revert back to Vista. However, if the English ISO with my purchased product key works, maybe I can just do that. Would be great if that works fine.

I take it the old Vista system is stored in Windows.old folder? If I'm happy with the W7 install, I can just delete that folder and get most of my hard drive space back, correct?

Thank you again. I'm not feeling quite so discouraged....

 

What is "it"? What is the "issue"? I am sorry, but you're going to have to be a bit more specific. Contrary to what you may expect, we're not very good at mind reading here...