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Downgrading to Windows 10 w/o complete reinstall ?

QuantumSingularity
By QuantumSingularity
in Windows
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Guys, is there a way to downgrade to Windows 10 w/o reinstall. I accidentally clicked on the clickbait to install Windows 11 and decided to run with it for a month, you know... to give it a chance and see how it's like, but since then it's been a complete crap. My games are running worse, i am having freezes and restarts which i never had in the previous 2 years since i last installed windows 10. Programs which before that ran perfectly fine now refuse to start with "driver cannot be loaded" error. The MacOS style navigation with the start menu being in the center of the task bar boils my blood every single time i try to use it with the mouse, still haven't found how to show all the taskbar icons. It's absolutely dreadful experience. It is and i dare say it - a worse experience even than Windows Vista. It's by far the absolute version MS have ever launched. The only thing preventing me from erasing the whole drive and starting fresh is the setup for my sim-racing. Every single time i reinstall, i have a least 4 hours of just wheel adjusting because the stupid g-hub software refuses to accept the already done LUT table for the wheel. In addition to that steam also refuses to do a proper save backup for some games and i end up starting all over again with the ratings. So is there a way to downgrade to Windows 10 w/o reinstalling or should i just accept defeat, cut my loses and Format C?

| Ryzen 7 5800X3D | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 Rev 7| AsRock X570 Steel Legend |

| 4x16GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo 4000MHz CL16 | Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6900 XT | Seasonic Focus GX-1000|

| 512GB A-Data XPG Spectrix S40G RGB | 2TB A-Data SX8200 Pro| Phanteks Eclipse G500A |

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Posted

Reinstall

sadly there isn’t really a proper way to downgrade, a windows upgrade is more like packing up all your stuff in a box while Microsoft replaces the install, then unpacks your stuff

there isn’t any windows 10 left, and they don’t want you to “upgrade” to windows 10 from 11 to do the same thing in reverse


you may be able to just locate where Logitech keeps all its configuration files, and keep a copy of them to put them back in place on the new install to potentially save yourself the hassle of reconfiguring them, but I do not know about logitechs software to know where all that is

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34 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

Guys, is there a way to downgrade to Windows 10 w/o reinstall. I accidentally clicked on the clickbait to install Windows 11 and decided to run with it for a month, you know... to give it a chance and see how it's like, but since then it's been a complete crap.

MS does allow you to undo the upgrade but only within 30 days. After this period the backup is automatically removed.

 

36 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

ecause the stupid g-hub software refuses to accept the already done LUT table for the wheel.  addition to that steam also refuses to do a proper save backup for some games

When clean reinstalling I always backup my Windows user folder. After reinstalling my software I then only copy over the files to restore settings/game saves.

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4 hours ago, 8tg said:

they don’t want you to “upgrade” to windows 10 from 11

this 🙂

 

4 hours ago, C2dan88 said:

MS does allow you to undo the upgrade but only within 30 days. After this period the backup is automatically removed.

didn't know about this, thanks

 

4 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

Guys, is there a way to downgrade to Windows 10 w/o reinstall. I accidentally clicked on the clickbait to install Windows 11 and decided to run with it for a month, you know... to give it a chance and see how it's like, but since then it's been a complete crap. My games are running worse, i am having freezes and restarts which i never had in the previous 2 years since i last installed windows 10. Programs which before that ran perfectly fine now refuse to start with "driver cannot be loaded" error. The MacOS style navigation with the start menu being in the center of the task bar boils my blood every single time i try to use it with the mouse, still haven't found how to show all the taskbar icons. It's absolutely dreadful experience. It is and i dare say it - a worse experience even than Windows Vista. It's by far the absolute version MS have ever launched. The only thing preventing me from erasing the whole drive and starting fresh is the setup for my sim-racing. Every single time i reinstall, i have a least 4 hours of just wheel adjusting because the stupid g-hub software refuses to accept the already done LUT table for the wheel. In addition to that steam also refuses to do a proper save backup for some games and i end up starting all over again with the ratings. So is there a way to downgrade to Windows 10 w/o reinstalling or should i just accept defeat, cut my loses and Format C?

While I don't like windows 11, I think the issues your experiancing are more likely to do with the way windows 11 was installed. The upgrade feature is notorious for causing issues like this. Your best plan (even if you could undo the upgrade) would be to reinstall the windows (10 or 11) with a new clean windows installation media (while keeping the files others have suggested). Best of luck.

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useful websites: https://www.productchart.com - helps compare monitors, https://uk.pcpartpicker.com - makes designing a PC easier.

 

He/Him

 

I'm a PhD student working in the fields of reinforcement learning and traffic control. PCs are one of my hobbies and I've built many PCs and performed upgrades on a few laptops (for myself, friends and family). My personal computers include 3 windows (10/11) machines and a TrueNAS server (and I'm looking to move to dual booting Linux Mint on my main machine in future). While I believe I have an decent amount of experience in spec’ing, building and troubleshooting computers, keep in mind I'm not an expert or a professional and I make mistakes.

 

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Well, spent the whole day restoring settings and data, but it was worth it. No more random driver errors, no more lags and freezes in games and proper GPU utilization. I just can't wrap my mind around the fact MS managed to give us an OS that is worse than Vista.

| Ryzen 7 5800X3D | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 Rev 7| AsRock X570 Steel Legend |

| 4x16GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo 4000MHz CL16 | Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6900 XT | Seasonic Focus GX-1000|

| 512GB A-Data XPG Spectrix S40G RGB | 2TB A-Data SX8200 Pro| Phanteks Eclipse G500A |

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On 2/11/2024 at 1:01 PM, will0hlep said:

didn't know about this, thanks

actually... even after this period, you can just "delete" the update in update history... it "should" revert to previous versions... keyword should,  especially since it'd be from 11 to 10....

 

 

I'd recommend to clone your current os drive so you don't lose anything, then reinstall 10 on a fresh, seperate drive... then you can always copy back most of your stuff.

 

The direction tells you... the direction. 

-Scott Manley, 2021

 

Softwares used:

Corsair Link (Anime Edition) 

MSI Afterburner 

OpenRGB

Lively Wallpaper 

OBS Studio

Shutter Encoder

Avidemux

FSResizer

Audacity 

VLC

WMP

GIMP

HWiNFO64

Paint

3D Paint

GitHub Desktop 

Superposition 

Prime95

Aida64

GPUZ

CPUZ

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On 2/11/2024 at 8:20 PM, QuantumSingularity said:

Well, spent the whole day restoring settings and data, but it was worth it. No more random driver errors, no more lags and freezes in games and proper GPU utilization. I just can't wrap my mind around the fact MS managed to give us an OS that is worse than Vista.

wait.. Vista was the best, my daily driver from like 2008 to 2017! no issues whatsoever, it's just that shitty asus/acer pre-built mobo died, otherwise I'd still rock that! 

 

ps: ah well seems you reinstalled 

The direction tells you... the direction. 

-Scott Manley, 2021

 

Softwares used:

Corsair Link (Anime Edition) 

MSI Afterburner 

OpenRGB

Lively Wallpaper 

OBS Studio

Shutter Encoder

Avidemux

FSResizer

Audacity 

VLC

WMP

GIMP

HWiNFO64

Paint

3D Paint

GitHub Desktop 

Superposition 

Prime95

Aida64

GPUZ

CPUZ

Generic Logviewer

 

 

 

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