W10 > W7 Roll Back

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When I decided to upgrade what I thought was a 'sacrificial' W7 laptop, just to take a look at W10, I naively believed the Msoft propaganda that said I could 'easily' roll back if I didn't like W10. What they don't tell you is that you need free space on your C: drive equivalent to twice the size of Windows.old in order to roll back -- if you haven't got that -- tough luck!!

I'm posting this just in case someone out there has a way of 'knife and forking' a roll back using Windows.old.
AND yes you guessed it -- that laptop wasn't as 'sacrificial' as I thought!!

Many thanks.
 
If you can get to a restart menu, press shift and restart at the same time and it will boot into a diagnostics mode and give you the choice to rollback. You can also enter safe mode and command prompt mode from here.
 
If you can get to a restart menu, press shift and restart at the same time and it will boot into a diagnostics mode and give you the choice to rollback. You can also enter safe mode and command prompt mode from here.

Thanks for your response.

Sadly that just dumps me into an Automatic Repair loop. There is a <Go back to the previous build> option, but that takes you back in W10. Because there wasn't enough free space on C: (a 128GB SSD) the upgrade never gave me the option to roll back -- the button is not there. What I was looking for in this post is to discover how I can 'manually' roll back from the windows.old folder.
 
windows.old is merely an inventory of folders and has no installer attached. This any help? Windows 10 - Go Back to Previous Windows

Thanks for your response.

Option 1 just produces "There is a problem" on every successive screen and takes me back into an infinite 'Automatic Repair' loop and I can't get into settings (Option 2) as W10 has got itself so screwed up it won't boot AND 'normal' Safe Mode keyboard shortcuts don't work at W10.

I can do a clean install of W7, but there are several heavily customised applications that will take a while to reinstall -- windows.old seemed like the least effort solution.

Thanks again.
 
I see no other way really. Maybe someone else will spot this and suggest something.
 
I see no other way really. Maybe someone else will spot this and suggest something.

I have a couple of other options before I have to do the clean install -- I have the old disk I cloned the SSD from that still has a working version of W10 on it -- I can give Option 2 a try with that -- I was also going to try my W7 rescue media, just in case that might work.

Thanks again.
 
Well good luck anyway.
Thanks -- It's a shame Msoft was not more forthcoming with ALL the appropriate information before 'encouraging' people to upgrade.
I run Sophos AV and Firewall and there was no information about the fact that I needed to upgrade that before it would work on W10 -- it just disappeared and potentially put my system was at risk. Sadly it's back to the old days with Msoft 'encouraging' people to change their whole environment every 6 months and usually not for the better.
W10 is beginning to do a few things right, but it's certainly not an inconsequential or even 'no cost' upgrade.
 
I know what you mean.

When I was in technical computing full time, we had a concept called "Stable Computing Environment" -- it seems that Msoft does its worst to undermine these ideas and call it progress, when in fact it just makes their job easier and reduces THEIR costs at OUR expense.
 
Can you move a sufficiently large chunk of user data off onto external storage temporarily while you complete the roll-back ?
 
Can you move a sufficiently large chunk of user data off onto external storage temporarily while you complete the roll-back ?

Hello Terry,

There is no roll back option -- the so-called free upgrade does the calculation and if it decides there is not enough free space it doesn't give you the roll back button in Settings>Update&Security>Recovery, even though the windows.old partition is there. Also it deletes the windows.old partition after 31 days whether you want it to or not. The W10 upgrade is OK if it works for you -- if it doesn't you're screwed.

Thanks for your response. Cheers, Charles.
 
Thats why I suggested creating sufficient space, so that it will give you the option.
You can just copy all the data back afterwards.
 
Thats why I suggested creating sufficient space, so that it will give you the option.
You can just copy all the data back afterwards.

That only works if you know about it BEFORE you upgrade -- there is no information from Msoft or others to that effect -- so if your C drive is congested and you upgrade you're screwed.
 
Sorry I misunderstood.
You're saying the upgrade never created a Windows.old in the first place.
I thought you were implying that it couldn't use Windows.old without more space.
 
Sorry I misunderstood.
You're saying the upgrade never created a Windows.old in the first place.
I thought you were implying that it couldn't use Windows.old without more space.

Sorry I'm not being clear -- it did create a windows.old folder which magically disappeared after 31 days. But in doing the upgrade, because there wasn't free space to the tune of twice the size of the windows.old folder, it didn't give me a roll back button in the Recovery dialogue, so I couldn't use windows.old automatically. The whole point of this thread is to discover whether there is a way to roll back manually from a windows.old folder.
 
Sorry I'm not being clear -- it did create a windows.old folder which magically disappeared after 31 days. But in doing the upgrade, because there wasn't free space to the tune of twice the size of the windows.old folder, it didn't give me a roll back button in the Recovery dialogue, so I couldn't use windows.old automatically. The whole point of this thread is to discover whether there is a way to roll back manually from a windows.old folder.
Charles I think I got same problem. I have a lenova and when I was asked everyday by MS to upgrade to windows 10 I refused. I was very happy with my pre-installed win 7 gome premium. One day it started downloading windows 10 without my knowledge or I missed it but I couldnt stop it. It began installing after the dowenload and I had to sit helplessy and watch . It got to 95% finished and stopped with an error, the only thing is it didnt re-install my pre-installed windows 7. So I cant system recover or do much of anything on what I guess is what was left of puter without windows. I I purchased the recover windows disk but it is not helping one bit and am asking for refund. Microsoft says its a lenova issue and lenovo says MS sis responsible. I really had high hopes when I read about thewindow recovery disk I just purchased but I am again heart broke over my computer.
 
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