Win7 recovery after forced update to Win10

LexGary

Member
Greetings,

I have a Dell Precision workstation which is about four months old, shipped with Win7, and which the Dell website says it NOT compatible with Windows 10. I have always declined the Win10 upgrade offer. Last night, without asking me, Microsoft attempted to upgrade me to Windows 10. Guess what? The box is not compatible. The Windows 10 setup screen displays but "next" does nothing. Dell support said I was hosed and would have to reinstall the OS.

A MS user's forum pointed me here, and I have executed the Windows 10 Rollback Utility. All went according to plan, with the last window showing the Win7 partition as D: and I restarted with that selected. Good things seemed to happen, but it booted back into the broken Windows 10 install. The same frozen display screen.
Any ideas what to try next?
Thanks,
Gary
 
Can you boot into Safe Mode by tapping F8 repeatedly during boot up? I was hoping that may give you the Advanced Menu option to tell the system to use "Another OS" i.e. Windows 7 or maybe even roll-back. I'm really surprised at Microsoft doing this and have always assumed that should an upgrade fail it would automatically roll back to the previous installation. That's the usual way things go.
When upgrading a system is your next major satep, always look for an upgrade readiness tool, to check first if your system can take it. With Dell, obviously they don 't do Win 10 compatible drivers for your model, or maybe they do and thanks to their weird way of providing updates to drivers, manual installation of same has to occur first, but who knows?
 
Thanks for the suggestion Peter. Safe mode must have been deleted when MS did the "upgrade". F8 does nothing - the Win10 install screen still comes up. It still does not get past the opening screen with the "welcome to Windows 10" and a "next" button.

Dell clearly states that the machine does not support Windows 10. It is only a few months old and may require drivers that are not in the standard Win 10 package. The evil-doer is Mircosoft, who attempted the update without my permission, or checking Dell for compatibility.

The rollback tool did think that it completed successfully. That, together with "safe mode" being missing, must be a clue of some sort.

If you have any other suggestions, they would be appreciated.

thanks again!
Gary
 
Too late now but a pity you didn't hide certain updates earlier on which would have avoided this. 2 in particular which cause the upgrade nag screens and then this forced update. But that's for another conversation.
I'm going to ask my colleagues here as I haven't been stuck in this situation myself.
 
Can you recommend a tool to block the upgrade, or quiet the nag screens? We have more than one Windows 7 machine.
I simply had no idea that Microsoft would attack without permission ....

thanks,
Gary
 
No tool that I'm aware of but if you uninstall the following updates and then when they are re-offered simply hide them. At least one of them has had several iterations pushed through so you just have to be vigilant and monitor Windows Update carefully expecially now that updating is staggered over the entire month.
KB3035583
KB3123862
 

Attachments

  • Capture.JPG
    Capture.JPG
    139.6 KB · Views: 1
I meant to say, "help you with other machines" at the end above. This one, I've asked for help with. One way of fixing it off the top of my head would be to boot from any Win 7 disk and do a Startup Repair under Advanced Options (don't proceed with an installation).
 
yes, it said archived. it looked just like the demo.

F12 is ignored - they must have removed the recovery options.

reboot (even with F12) goes into the W10 setup, which hangs on the first screen. Dell say the machine is not W10 compatible.

thanks,
Gary
 
Back
Top