Posted on 01/17/2018 7:20:22 PM PST by markomalley
Not everyone loves Windows 10. Many people upgraded from Windows 7 and regretted it. It might not work with your favorite (and maybe old) software and seems to hang frequently. If you belong to this camp and are looking for ways to get back to Windows 7, here’s a breakdown of how to downgrade Windows 10 and reinstall Windows 7 on your PC.
You can only use this option if you upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7. Note that this method will not work if you did a clean reinstall or if you’ve had your Windows 10 running for longer than thirty days.
To get started, press the Win + I as shown in the image below to call up the Settings menu.
Or use the Start Menu to call up your Settings menu.
When the Settings menu opens, click on “Updates & Securities”, followed by “Recovery.” An option to “Go back to Windows 7” will appear.
Click on “Get Started” to remove Windows 10 from your PC. The question “Why are you going back?” will show. Choose whatever option suits you and click “Next.”
You’ll get an option to update Windows 10 instead. A reminder to disable your password will also come up. Finally, the “Go back to windows 7” button will show up. Click on it.
Your PC will be downgraded to Windows 7. Downgrading will take a while to process.
Sometimes Windows 10 won’t give you the option to downgrade to Windows 7. This situation may be the result of your Windows 10 being older or because an error occurred with your upgrade. In this case you’ll have to do a clean install of Windows.
You may either use the installation disc or an ISO file to reinstall your Windows 7. An ISO file is an image file that works as if you’ve inserted your original installation disc into your PC.
For this process use your Windows 7 installation code and disc – the disc that either came with your PC or your Windows 7 software when you bought it. Check the base of your PC for a “Certificate of Authenticity” sticker to find your product key.
Your product key may also be in your battery compartment. Sometimes Microsoft sends it as part of your welcome email after you buy your PC or Windows OS. If your installation disc is lost, use Microsoft’s ISO file that can be downloaded from their website.
First, backup your PC’s data to an external disc. Make sure you know your system requirements. You’ll also need to have a few things handy to get your ISO file.
Once on the Microsoft site, enter your Windows 7 product key, and click “Verify.” Choose your product language and whether your PC is 32-bit or 64-bit.
Back up your data to an external disc. If you have an ISO file, then you’ll need the Windows USB/DVD download tool to create a bootable USB drive/DVD.
With the Windows ISO file on your external storage, run the “Windows DVD Download Tool” to install your Windows 7 from that external DVD drive directly. If your PC has no DVD drive, use a USB drive. Boot Windows 7 from it and ask it to overwrite Windows 10.
The two options provided above make it easy to reinstall Windows 7 if you’re currently on Windows 10.
The first method works (direct downgrade) only if you’ve upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 within the last thirty days. Use the second option – ISO file or clean Windows install – if the other is not available. Also, remember to back up all your data first.
Tried 10 went back to 7. Don’t intend to buy another windows machine. Sick of having to learning how to interface with the machine every time they come out with a new version. Will reconsider if they bring back the XP interface.
“...I’m not tech savvy but I’m switching to Ubuntu or Linux clone this weekend. If I can get that to work I’ll never buy another Window product....”
Windows 10 was the final straw for us....no more!!!
We did keep one Dell desktop with Windows 7 for specific windows programs that we don’t want to do without....at least not yet.
The two laptops (1 for her and 1 for me) were wiped clean, upgraded with SSDs and Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia installed on em.
Linux is a lot of fun to play with, and it has come a long, long ways over the years. So far, we’ve found only 2 needs that we couldn’t fulfill with it: One was a stitching program that my wife uses (proprietary) and the other is the Directv Cisco video player. Currently, they’re only supporting Mac OSX and Windows. Other than that, it does everything else that we had Windows doing previously.
My desktop is a mid-2010 27” iMac with High Sierra installed. That machine is used for stock brokerage and internet surfing.
I was influenced to upgrade my laptop from Windows 7 to 10.
I hated 10 with every fibre of my being. More and more with each passing day. Went back to 7 a few days ago but DH had to do it with a tech guy and also did his computer and it has created a very hard situation to fix.
Windows 10 makes it so I had no control over anything and it was stupid, childish, no “search” but “Ask Cortana” and inane and aggravating “suggestions” popping up and I never could find anything on my computer, it would save things multiple times in weird locations, and on and on.
Maybe for tech people it’s good, but for techtards like me, it was hell.
I’m still not back on my regular laptop yet.
What browser % search engine do you use?
I just started to get updates again on win7 for some reason.
I use Firefox and in the settings you can set it to use quite a few search engines like Google, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go and more. I have mine set for Duck Duck Go.
If your computer processor supports 64-bit operating systems, you can get the 64-bit Ubuntu ISO. In W7 and W10 you just right click on My Computer or This PC and then click on properties. That should bring up a details page and it will tell you if you are already using a 64-bit system or not. The reason I bring this up is because you can download and install Google Chrome for Ubuntu but Google Chrome only supports 64-bit systems.
CGato
I had my computer repair shop set me up with dual boot of Linux Mint and Windows 10. You get the best of both worlds on one computer.
Those are the Meltdown and Spectre patches. They probably slowed down your computer.
https://blog.barkly.com/meltdown-spectre-patches-list-windows-update-help#windows-updates
I'm not one that uses Linux desktops, but I have a handful of Ubuntu Linux servers I manage at work, and they're bulletproof. I've had an email relay server running for nearly 2 years with only 3 restarts: 2 for major OS patches, and the third when we moved our data center to a new facility.
I really like Ubuntu, and I've heard really good things about Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu.
If you download their bootable image, you'll be able to try it before installing it on your system, though it will be substantially slower than if it were running on the hard disk.
Be advised though, there are some apps that will simply not run on Linux under any circumstances, like iTunes. But if you have enough RAM on your system, you should be able to load a virtual machine system, like VirtualBox - https://www.pcsteps.com/184-install-virtualbox-linux-mint-ubuntu/ - to run applications that require Windows. It doesn't work in EVERY instance, but it does work well for the most part.
Mark
Starting early last year, my Windows 7 Elitebook started getting slower and slower. Around October it was taking 20 minutes to launch Kali in VMWare with 16 GB of RAM.
I suspected that Windows was hamstringing Windows 7 for about 6 months when I ran across this:
windows 10 to 7 bookmark
I’m not a techie. A year ago, I accepted the free download of Windows 10 to my laptop. It was constant updates, tying up my laptop for many long minutes again and again when I needed it. Like a half hour at a time. I took this for about two months and finally took the thing to my neighborhood computer store and said, get it off. He talked me into getting a new laptop since he said the old one could go at any time and the cost of him removing Windows 10 was too high compared with just getting a new laptop. Whatever, I went with his suggestion and now I have a system that I enjoy. If it starts to get slow, I power it off and see the Windows 7 is wanting to update. It never takes too long.
Windows 7 had its problems, too. Like having USB devices work on one port but not another. Like updates causing software to cease working. Like communicating behind your back to “Gates knows who” over the network.
I dumped Microsoft on the desktop and laptop, glad I did. Its just etch-a-sketch now, baby!
Depending on your system, you may want to avoid the Spectre and Meltdown patches. These could severely slow your computer down.
Microsoft reveals how Spectre updates can slow your PC down
Also, here is a free program from Steve Gibson ( GRC.com) that you can run that will show if you are vulnerable and what the consequences of patching will be:
I installed Windows 10 when it first came out, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t like it. I then reinstalled Windows 7.
Linux has a lot of potential but i think it suffers from too many versions rather than fully maturing one (Linux Mint is perhaps the best) I have used every major Linux distro and some minor ones but have had problems with them all, and which fail to provide the degree of customization I can rather easily obtain with Windows.
For instance, having stiff arthritic typo-prone fingers, in order to quickly and easily copy and paste, I wanted to remap the CapsLock key to ctrl+c, and then the Esc key to ctrl+v (and then Esc to NumLock), and the middle mouse button to ctrl+x (cut) and also launch programs via hot keys, all of which i can easily do with AutoHotKey , which did not take too much time to find out.
However, despite extensive searching and different proffered possible ways of remapping the CapsLock key that would continually work I found none, except for Fedora, but which had other drawbacks. The Linux alternative to AutoHotKey, "AutoKey," lacks the maturity of AutoHotKey, as do many other Linux alternatives to safe Windows freeware (but Firefox and OpenOffice are very good, and Firefox has no peer for power users, though you need to stick with Firefox ESR for now. .
Then there are the extensive customization provided by such Windows programs as listed in post #10 .
I do have Xubuntu (i found it better than Lubuntu or others for older hardware ) installed on a old laptop alongside XP, yet the former will not recognize the wireless card despite having the drivers. I have to use a external dongle.
But thank God we have alternatives and such tools, which i see to use for Him and for good.
Install Classic Shell in Windows 10 and continue to run 10 with the Windows 7 user interface. Works terrific.
I thought this was not so useful, until I discovered that Win 10 has at best (there are different stats out there) no more than 1/2 the Windows OS users.
I have a Laptop in Win 10, only because I did not know about the 30-day opportunity to revert back to Win 8, and a desktop PC I still use Win 7 on.
I’ve haven’t run in the the short-cuts problem but I don’t use many myself. So far, I’ve had pretty good luck with Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Lubuntu. I’ve tried Xbuntu and it’s good but leaned towards using Lubuntu. You are right, there may be too many distros but the good thing is the good ones rise to the top.
I’ve tried quite a few Linux distros myself but most of them come down to their unique desktop environments and apps they come with. Even if a distro doesn’t come with a certain app, it can always be installed. If I install Linux for another person, I like to start with Lubuntu because the desktop environment is similar to Windows XP so it makes it familiar to the user.
I do like to go to Noobslab.com to get my custom themes and icons. Depending on what your build is determines what themes you can use from there. On the 16.04 Lubuntu machines I like to use the Windows XP themes but there is much more themes you can customize your desktop environment any way you like. Not sure if you have checked them out but I thought I’d mention it in case or for anyone who wants to customize their desktop environments more in the Ubuntu flavors.
CGato
Well, I have spent too much time trying to get Linux distros to do things that are usually not needed in Windows (broken packages, etc.) or can be done rather easily (getting printers to work, finding hardware info and getting it to work, finding software locations, creating shortcuts to them, changing system files, etc.) and just wasted more time trying to get Xubuntu to recognize the built in network card, which XP does. Even the latest Xubuntu 17 live would not even see it, and it is utterly missing a real equivalent to Windows Device manager.
Thus apart from a hobby, unless one needs a free OS, as in the case of an old unit, then since Windows offers superior usability and function without having to learn a lot of coding I see no reason to switch. Of course, most people think Chrome is better than Firefox, which it surely is not if you want to have far greater functionality.
Yet if Windows could not be easily substantially customized thru the use of solid freeware then I might well be mainly a Linux user.
Not that i am done with Linux, as i recently installed a flavor on another older laptop, and still think it has a lot of potential, but for me it is still too much lacking for what i want to have it do.
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