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The final section of this post provides a thorough review. Win-R thus means “hold the WinKey and hit the R key.” Note also that Win- is short for the Windows key (a/k/a WinKey), which bears a Windows logo and is typically located near the lower left corner of Windows-compatible keyboards.
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Note that, in this post, commands and other items capable of being run on the command line or in the Run dialog (Win-R) (e.g., devmgmt.msc) are shown in italics. This post describes how I got past those problems, and discusses precautions to prevent similar problems in the future. Maybe I was having problems because, this time, I was trying to install 32-bit Windows on a 64-bit laptop. An earlier post seemed to confirm my recollection of no significant problem with drivers, in my previous Win7 installations on this laptop - but now Device Manager ( devmgmt.msc) displayed a number of pieces of hardware for which satisfactory drivers were not installed. I had just finished installing 32-bit Windows 7 Home Basic on an old Lenovo ThinkPad E430 laptop.
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