How to Switch from Insider to a Stable Build of Windows 11

cereberus · Dec 21, 2023

Berton said:
That was the 'warning' when I was in the Win10 Insider, fortunately I had a spare machine to do it on.

That works as well. I think the problem is more with new users who sign up without fully understanding things.
Of course, most of our replies are "preaching to the converted".

Berton · Dec 21, 2023

cereberus said:
That works as well. I think the problem is more with new users who sign up without fully understanding things.
Of course, most of our replies are "preaching to the converted".

You're right. It just struck me that I've passed the 29th anniversary of starting a new career in computer building/servicing after retiring.

Bree · Dec 21, 2023

cereberus said:
In simple terms, I recomend users either run Insider versions as a dual boot (physical partitions or vhdx files), or in a virtual machine, keeping main OS as release version.

yeah, that's best. I prefer the .vhdx route...

"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

...or, in my case, One Machine :wink:

Winuser · Dec 21, 2023

cereberus said:
Yeah at one time you could but then MS changed it to current system.

Dev effectivly ended up like Skip Ahead - always ahead of next release version, then they really messed up things adding canary even further ahead in Build number.

Even though MS said you could leave Beta, the reality was that it never worked properly.

In simple terms, I recomend users either run Insider versions as a dual boot (physical partitions or vhdx files), or in a virtual machine, keeping main OS as release version.

If a user chooses to run Insider version as main OS without dual boot, accept clean installs are required to return to release version.

I can truthfully say that on any of the builds that caused me trouble I just had to use my Macrium image to roll back and wait for the next build. I did have a problem updating to newer builds on my old desktop. For some reason I couldn't get it to update. Everytime I tried it would roll back. I waited until the next build was released and it still wouldn't update. I even tried using my Macrium images to go back to older builds and it still wouldn't update. I finally gave up and did a clean install of the latest Canary build at the time and started over.

SurfaceUnits · Feb 25, 2024

Almighty1 said:
I don't think one can technically switch without a fresh install as the insiders build will usually have a higher version/build number than the stable builds anyways to be able to downgrade. Glad you got everything working though.

MS sent out a 23H2 (repair version) update that removes a system from insider