Going Back to 7 from 10

[richardf77]

Anyone had to go back to 7 after upgrading to 10?

I am talking about the function to revert within 30 days of upgrading, which i know id the best way to do it if you manage it in time

How easy is it to do, how do you it and does 7 work OK afterwards?

How can you find out/tell if you are still within the 30 days? I have lost track of how long it is since i upgraded. I think it is less than a month.

I have/had a laptop and a desktop both running 7 Home Premium. The desktop is my main machine so instead of risking messing up my main PC with a bad upgrade i decided to upgrade the laptop first. to try 10 out and iron out any problems. This i have done and am quite happy with the results. I am now prepared to upgrade 'the mothership' desktop to 10 so that i can try more software and peripherals out with 10 (the laptop only has the bare essentials). However in case i find software or peripherals on the desktop dont work or malfunction with 10 i still want the backup of a 7 machine, for the things that perhaps arent compatible with 10. So i effectively want to 'swap' the OS around on the 2 machines (not literally!). 10 on desktop, 7 on laptop.

Thats why i want to know about uninstalling 10!

One other thing, before i upgrade the desktop i think it will be a good idea to do a System Image backup of the PC, just in case.  I have a new empty portable hard drive available for this purpose. Does this sound like a good idea? What does a system image backup? Just Windows or everything - user files, all the software etc?

Thanks

[patio]

Here Ya Go...

[richardf77]

Thanks for the link. Have decided to try th advice contained concerning extending the rollback period as i only have about 4 days left to do it and wont have time before the deadline to make use of it.

One thing i am not clear on is what happens after i go back? Say i go back to 7 but then decide maybe i will have 10 on the machine after all and try to upgrade again, can it be done as long as its still within the 12 month free period? or is that it once i have gone back to 7 i cant upgrade again without paying for it?

Has anyone tried this out? I suppose it all depends what happens to the download files once you use them to load 10, if like other downloaded software it stays on the machine and is reusable then fine, but i have a sneaky feeling the upgrade process might delete these files. If the latter is the case i wonder if you could download again?

[patio]

One thing i am not clear on is what happens after i go back? Say i go back to 7 but then decide maybe i will have 10 on the machine after all and try to upgrade again, can it be done as long as its still within the 12 month free period? or is that it once i have gone back to 7 i cant upgrade again without paying for it?

Yes...

[richardf77]

Yes...

To which? I asked 2 different questions there.

[patio]

Yes you can still re-do the upgrade within the 12 month period.

[richardf77]

Yes you can still re-do the upgrade within the 12 month period.

Thanks for clarifying that.

[richardf77]

If you didn't revert to 7 within the 30 day grace period but then needed to go back to 7 how would you do it? I am guessing it would have to be a  clean reinstall to get rid of ten. However if you did that what happens to the licence and product key? As I understand ir upgrading to 10 means the licence and key transfers to the new OS from the old, so if you went back to the old OS what happens to the licence and key? Will it go back or  would you need a new licence and key for the reinstalled OS? Without a new key does it become invalidated/illegal?

I think this has happened to me. I reinstalled 7 to a PC where 10 went wrong, now Windows says I have 25 days to enter a valid product key or purchase a new one (or else no Windows I suppose).  I entered the correct key when I reinstalled and it was apparently accepted so I don't know what to do.

[patio]

Method for After the Fact...

[Salmon Trout]

I am guessing it would have to be a  clean reinstall to get rid of ten. However if you did that what happens to the licence and product key?

The licence and key that were valid for Windows 7 before you upgraded remain perpetually valid for 7 whether you roll back within 30 days, or fresh install 7 or restore a 7 system image.

[richardf77]

How can I fix the product key problem I now have? Original and proper key not recognised or invalid? Could I have somehow installed the wrong version or whatever. I am sure ir was a Home Premium 64bit like it was before.

[patio]

Call MS...activation Help is Free...

[richardf77]

Why should i have to? I have a perfectly legitimate product key purchased with the computer but now Microsoft wont accept it because i have had to reinstall the Software it relates to. All because their precious Windows 10 messed up the machine!!

I have been here :https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows7 and tried downloading a fresh copy and entered the product key. Site wouldnt acept it and refered me to the PC manufacturers website. ASUS dont want to know apparently as i cant find anything to help on their support website. They are no longer interested in helping users of the K53E laptops it seems. All they want to do is sell you a new ASUS Laptop!

Sorry about the rant. Wasted a lot of time on this problem. Getting pretty hacked off with Microsoft in particular. Not getting anyone on this forum.

[BC_Programmer]

Are you using the Windows 7 Key originally associated with that system? As I understand it, you have a desktop and a laptop. The laptop you upgraded to Windows 10 first. As per your original post, it worked fine there. Then I presume you installed Windows 10 to your desktop, and found it didn't work, so you reinstalled Windows 7... or you mention you wanted to reverse it so the laptop had Windows 7 and the desktop had Windows 10.

One thing to remember is you cannot use the Win7 key on a new install if that Win7 Key is the same key in use on an active Windows 10 install. That is, if you upgrade the laptop to Windows 10, you cannot use the Windows 7 key that was on that system for a Windows 7 install elsewhere.

I also don't see an response to your original question regarding System Image creation- you can create a disk image using something like Macrium Reflect. The main thing is that where you store the image should be larger than the drive you want to make an image of. It saves absolutely everything on that drive- if you make a system image of a Windows 7 install, upgrade to Windows 10, and then restore the disk image, it will be back to windows 7 exactly as it was before.

Why should i have to? I have a perfectly legitimate product key purchased with the computer but now Microsoft wont accept it because i have had to reinstall the Software it relates to. All because their precious Windows 10 messed up the machine!!

You are trying to jump back and forth a bit here. You upgraded your laptop to Windows 10, you want to upgrade your desktop to Windows 10 but you want to rollback the laptop to Windows 7. Presumably you did upgrade the desktop to Windows 10 so now you want to roll that back as well since it gave you problems afterwards. You would have to use the appropriate Win7 key for each of them when reinstalling. I would expect the license servers work to detect when you downgraded by going "OK, is this the same hardware as we found when they upgraded this key to Windows 10?" And if so, it reassociates the key.

No doubt if the Windows 7 installs were already on the system (eg they were sold with Win7) that could complicate things as well as that is a whole other can of worms.

[richardf77]

OK I think we have all got in a bit of confusion with this. Let me try to clarify and explain better

There are 3 PCs involved here:

1 My 'Mothership' Desktop PC a Packard Bell (bought in 2010). Runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. Had been planning to upgrade it to 10 before the recent problems clarified below. It currently has NO PROBLEMS requiring forum assistance and is therefore not involved in this thread. I mention it for clarification only.

2. My personal laptop. 5 year old ASUS machine. Had its hard drive replaced after failure 2 years ago and had Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit reinstalled. One month ago this machine was upgraded to 10 with very little trouble other than a couple of driver issues. Still has 10 and currently has NO PROBLEMS needing forum help. However i had planned to return it to 7 when PC 1 (desktop) was upgraded to 10. this now will not he happening and will stay as a 10 trial machine for now.

3. Laptop belonging to a relative. An ASUS K53E around 5 years old originally running 7 Home Premium 64 bit. Was running slowly/irraticaly so when 10 came along the owner decided to upgrade to 10. Worked fine for a week, user happy with it then one day Windows refused to boot up, PC passed to me to fix. Inbuilt recovery options would not work, reset without clean install would not work. Decided to do a clean reinstall of 7 as i did not know why 10 installation failed. Used installation media used on my own laptop to reload 7 on this machine. This allowed me to keep the data partition and data within. All worked fine except for Network Adapter Drivers which needed updating to run the internet. Have slowly got the machine back running as before. Now it appears the windows reinstall was invalid and i have (now less than) 30 days to authenticate it or i suppose the PC will stop working (again).

As I see it i have 3 choices; Do nothing and see what happens - high risk strategy. Start again and reinstall using recovery media made when the PC was bought - will wipe drive as well as waste all my time and work done on the machine so far! Third option try to validate/authenticate the current install of windows. Dont know how easy this will be or if there will be unforeseen consequences with Microsoft. There probably are other options, but i cant think of them now!

Sorry if this is a bit long winded but i hope it clarifys things for you all.