[lili5689]

My brother installed the consumer preview on my laptop and i am wondering what happens when it expires. Will it just go back to windows 7? Also is there any way for me to downgrade to windows 7 in the meantime, because i dont care much for windows 8. Also i dont have the windows 7 install disk as the software was pre-installed on my laptop.

[TerryNet]

Because we can still install the Windows 8 Release Preview few people are concerned about the Consumer Preview expiring. I don't know exactly what will happen when either expires; when similar temporary releases of Windows 7 expired they did not completely stop working, but progressively got worse (black background, warning popups, automatic shut downs, etc.) to motivate users to stop using them.

Have you checked to see if Microsoft has posted anything about the Consumer (or Release) Preview end of life?

If you did not make a set of Recovery (or "Restore") DVDs (or CDs) when you still had access to the Recovery Partition you may still be able to buy a set from the PC manufacturer.

[jmwills]

No going back to Windows 7 unless you clean install. There is no upgrade path from the preview to the full version.