Remove Windows 11 and install Windows 10

Can I uninstall Windows 11 and reinstall Windows 10?

It depends on when you installed Windows 11 and if you removed the backup files or not. If you're within the default 10 day window (or you extended it) you can rollback with no problem. Otherwise, you can restore a backup of 10 if you have it or essentially just install 10 after removing 11.

Jayhawk714 said:

Can I uninstall Windows 11 and reinstall Windows 10?

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Yes

It's been way over the 10 day window so that option is out. I might have a 10 backup, have to check. But if I just uninstall 11 and reinstall 10 what would I lose, if anything?

It's the equivalent of formatting the drive when you downgrade like that, so it's essentially EVERYTHING that's not backed up.

Jayhawk714 said:

It's been way over the 10 day window so that option is out. I might have a 10 backup, have to check. But if I just uninstall 11 and reinstall 10 what would I lose, if anything?

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If you have a backup of Win 10, just wipe the Windows 11 partitions and restore Windows 10 from the backup.
Everything IN the Win 10 backup will still be there.

Ofc, this assumes that you also have the bootable version of the backup software,
that you made the Windows 10 backup... with.

For example... if you made the Win 10 backup with... Macrium Reflect, and also made Macrium's bootable rescue media... then you can just wipe Win 11 and boot from the rescue media and restore your Windows 10.

Most 3rd party backup software works this way. You have the program installed on the Windows drive, and that program allows you to make the bootable rescue media.

The bootable rescue media is mainly used to access your backups in case Windows won't boot.
Because of this, we can also use it to restore a previous operating system.

If you have no backup of Windows 10, I would take a full backup of the data, including some folders from ProgramData, Program Files and the hidden folder AppData in user folder. I will explain later. Then I would make a list of my installed applications and make sure I have the installers and keys for those I want back in 10, if not for all. You can find the installed applications keys with a utility such as Aida64, go to the Software section. After I am sure I have backup what I need, I would format the disk and clean install Windows 10. It should activate automatically once online, if it is the same version (Home or Pro) of Windows 11. I then install drivers and restore my data at their respective folder. Before installing an application, I would first restore the respective folders in their respective location. Then the installer of the application should detect these data and "upgrade" the application restoring all my settings! For example, if you copy all Mozilla folders from ProgramData, Program Files, userfolder\AppData\Local, AppData\Roaming and then restore at the respective locations before installing Firefox, you should then have back all your bookmarks, passwords, history etc! I have done that successfully for Firefox, Chrome and some other applications. Try it, it might also work for another application you want.

To move from Windows 11 to Windows 10 beyond the 10 day default go back period and 60 day modified go back period these are some options:

a) manually backup files > clean install Windows 10

b) have Windows backup files > clean install Windows 10

Drivers and applications need to be reinstalled.


Free backup images can be made of each Windows 11 and Windows 10 allowing the unlimited trial period with restoration back to the time in which the images were made.

Reinstalling your browser to find out it is empty, no bookmarks, no passwords is not convenient. See my previous reply before formatting.

I'd be sure to take a system image backup of what you have now before you start.

I've also in the past bought a new SSD/NVMe (whatever) for a machine, plopped it in and clean installed to it. got everything up and running, knowing that I could reinstall my orginal disk if need be. Once I am happen that new disk has everything I need, just take a backup of it (just another level of protection) and then reconfigure that old primary drive as a secondary new drive. This is the most costly method, but it does give you a new drive, and more space, and an immediately fallback option which boots in case you run into problems with the new disk.

I have done it in the past. I had for example my old disk running Windows 7 32-bit and I clean installed Windows 10 64-bit on a new disk and dual booted. Once I had Windows 10 with all the applications I wanted, I copied my data from Windows 7 and could finally remove the old disk, or use it as a second.

Jayhawk714 said:

Can I uninstall Windows 11 and reinstall Windows 10?

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Hello mate,

Assuming your PC supports Windows 10 (ex: drivers, etc...), you can always clean install Windows 10 like below.

The same drivers that work in Windows 11 should also work in Windows 10 as most manufacturers offer common Windows 10/11 drivers. For devices with Windows 10 or 8 64-bit drivers only, the same drivers work in Windows 11. With the exception of Intel graphics drivers for Windows 7, almost any Windows Vista 64-bitvor 7/8/10 64-bit driver also works in 11. I have confirmed that on every unsupported computer I have installed Windows 11 on. If there are no Windows 11 drivers, install Windows 10 64-bit ones, or Windows 8 64-bit or Windows 7 64-bit. In worst case even most Windows Vista 64-bit drivers should work. I have tested that on old laptops with Vista only drivers.

Jayhawk714 said:

Can I uninstall Windows 11 and reinstall Windows 10?

Click to expand...

Your situation may be a little tricky. You will need to do a complete reformat and install a fresh copy of Windows 10 that you would have to download from Microsoft (which has a media creation tool). You will need an 8GB or more flash drive (Thumb drive) to do this. You will also need to download all drivers from the manufacturer of your laptop and put them on the flash drive after the media creation tool completes. Plus, it is good practice to use an external mouse as the touchpad may not function until you install all the drivers (Especially the Serial IO drivers).

This method assumes you're going to reuse the same drive.

If you're not., its simpler to replace the drive and copy the data to the new drive. Copy instead of move so that you have a known good backup.

1. Copy any data that you want to keep to another drive, especially game data and saves.
2. Don't worry about the applications themselves, all that you need is the data and preferences but not the application itself
3. Write down on a sheet of paper a list of applications.
Why write it down? What;s faster, physically writing GOT3 or backing everything up to a new drive.
4. Install a fresh copy of Windows 10 and make any changes to the OS itself ONLY.
5. Install, from your list, all the applications listed. DO NOT OPEN the applications yet. TBy not opening the application until the next step prohibits the possibility of data corruption, especially important with games'
6. Finally copy all of the data saved back into the directory it came from and only then open the application.

Others may and will disagree, but this method, to the best of my knowledge, has never failed in the 60 years that I've used it.

The only problem that I can see is that in the very rare occasions that an update to an application makes it incompatible on the older version of an OS.

I have also done it. If you copy all the application folders into the respective folders of the new system, and then install the application thete is a good chance to get all your settings and application data back. This is confirmed to work for Firefox or other browsers, see my older post. Regarding doing a clean installation on a tablet or All-in-one, at first you have no touch feature and possibly no internet access. So it is advised to download all drivers and include in the USB before starting. Don't allow Windows Update or any other tool to automatically install drivers or you won't have the touch and rotation features. Install strictly only the official drivers from manufacturer starting with the chipset drivers (aka platform drivers) to restore touch and rotation functionality. Then proceed with the graphics drivers and others.

The disk your installing from has all of the drivers needed to set up a basic operating sys
In only an extremely few cases, more for modern, at the time, about 30 or so years ago, did I have to use the disk that came with the hardware to load a driver, other add-on applications yes but the actual driver never.

Also during installation you're asked for both the internet connection itself and the password required allowing you to use internet connection. During the installation process updated drivers for your hardware are installed, albeit not necessarily the most up to date one available.

Thus it's recommended practice to update the system again and then go to the manufacturers website to update the latest drivers.
In the case of a phone or tablet the last step isn't necessary as the manufacturer has these built-in. However still take the time to go

All systems throughout history have always done this, except in the cases where the hardware was too new for the OS to have an appropriate driver or that the product manufacturer is too shortsighted or cheap to write a driver for the various OS's. Here however, I'll give Apple a semi-pass even though it a proprietary layer built on top of UNIX.

And while Misrosoft Windows was built as a GUI for DOS, they corrupted DOS both so badly and poorly that standard DOS drivers don't work, and since DOS itself is so niche there's not much need for them.

A major Linux failure is the proliferation of way too many incomparable installation code requirements that a lot of manufacturers refuse to write compatible code for due to monetary reasons.

Wrong, up to Windows 95, Windows required DOS to run because it was a GUI for DOS with some extra GUI applications. Most DOS drivers (such as CD-ROM, ZIP-100 drive, audio) enabled the devices in Windows without having to install the respective Windows driver. Of course later the Windows drivers provided better compatibility and more functionality so eventually the DOS drivers were abandoned. Windows XP and newer are based on the Windows NT kernel and cannot use DOS drivers.

And, just to add, a command line window under XP ain't DOS. Even though it looks like it.

The DOS underpinnings were maintained through Windows 98. Windows ME was still built on top of DOS, but I never saw it used when a real DOS mode was needed. 98 was the latest I've seen for that.

There was a hack to enable the standard command prompt in Windows Me, should you want it. I didn't like it when Windows Me removed the scanreg command we used to fix Registry errors and replaced it with System Restore. In Windows 95 and 98 every time you installed a new driver or application, there was a backup of the Registry. If you couldn't boot into Windows you could restore Registry from an earlier backup with the scanreg command. This command was removed in Windows Me and later.