windows 8 not installing - grrr

[basildonbond]

ds has a new laptop as xmas/birthday present

the version we got came pre-installed with windows 7 but we could upgrade to windows 8 at a lower cost if we did it within a specified time

windows 8 duly downloaded but it's not installing - just won't do it!! and annoyingly doesn't give us any helpful message as to why not - it just refuses to budge and goes back to windows 7

I suspect that removing my own teeth without anaesthetic would be more pleasurable than tackling microsoft's support line ... so before I resort to that, any ideas as to what's going on?

thanks

According to thiss,you have to reinstall windos 7 before you can install windows 8,god knows why.
There is a step by step guidehere,hope it works for you.

That article was referring to the fact the OP had the preview edition on their machine.

Basil has Windows 7 which certainly should work for upgrading. But in the absence of any error messages, it's nigh on impossible to diagnose.

There is a good tutorial here,did you burn a disc from the download or save it to usb?Either way ,you might have to change the boot order in bios,that link shows you how to do that.

Thanks - will give that a try - dh downloaded it but has helpfully gone off on a work trip for the next three weeks ... Don't think he saved a copy but will ask

Hurrah!! I got it to work ... silly dh hadn't turned off the firewall

However, it took bloody hours ... kept on having to restart itself and telling me 'we're just getting things ready' ... I was losing the will to live ...

my computer is a lovely imac - the last time I updated the OS I downloaded lion, clicked install and that was it, done ... I love it even more now (but ds hasn't been well behaved enough to shell out for a macbook for him .... hah)