Repair Upgrade

I have decided to do a repair upgrade, but I will have to wait a few days because I need a memory stick.
I have downloaded it for both Windows 10 and 11.
My laptop originally had Windows 10 Home Edition, upgraded to Windows 11 Home Edition by Dell.
I think I will first try 11, just to see if the issues I have are solved, but can I also use the Windows 10 repair upgrade in case the issues are not solved and go back to Windows 10?
Many apps. including My Dell, still even identify my laptop as Windows 10.

I believe that you are not permitted to install 10 as an upgrade over 11.

You would have been permitted to roll back the upgrade to 11 if done within 10 days. That period could have been extended, but not after it expired. (The files from the old OS would have been deleted.)

To revert to 10, you would have to do a clean installation. (That supposes you didn't save an image of the Win10 install before the upgrade.)

If you don't have a back up image of Win 10 then your only option is a clean install. The Win 11 repair can be carried out without an stick as it can be done in place I believe

Ok, thank you.
I think Dell SupportAssist has an option to revert to Windows 10 and do a backup of files, but it is not the same as a repair upgrade and all apps would be lost.
I uninstalled and reinstalled Support Assist yesterday because I had read that somebody had solved the sleep button problem by uninstalling and reinstalling Dell QuickSet on another model, so I just tried with SA because QuickSet is not supported on my laptop. It didn't help, but when I restarted the laptop it gave me options to repair it, including the option above, but I don't want to lose my apps at this stage,
I will try the Windows 11 repair upgrade then. I didn't know I only had 10 days to revert to Windows 10 and I was actually sold the laptop with Windows 11 and initially I didn't even know it was an upgrade. I found out later.

SA and Quickset are horses of a different color. Just curious, when you say you don't want to lose your apps, what ones would you not be able to re-install if you did a clean install?

Well, I mean programs/software in general, not only apps, for example Photoshop. I would have to reinstall everything with a clean install.
With Windows 8 sometimes I refreshed the system, which made it work again, but software did not work any more and had to be reinstalled, even if the folders were there, because the registry entries had been wiped out.
Yes, unfortunately SA and QS are not the same, although I never had the pleasure to see what QS does at all. But I have found threads where people complain it's gone...

How long will it take by the way?

Windows 11 ISO downloadAn In-Place upgrade takes about 40 mins on MY computer (hardware).
It repairs Windows, and leaves everything else alone.

Here is the short version of the In-place upgrade tutorial...

DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software

Make a full OS backup with a program like Macrium Reflect (free)
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Go here (use the 3rd option at the site), download and save the Windows 11 ISO to your desktop.

Windows 11 ISO download





Right click the ISO image and choose: MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will "look" like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.

Choose the Keep personal files and apps option.

After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose: EJECT.


The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations. Your programs and data will be intact.

Thank you! Yes, I did intend to back up everything, just in case... I have Acronis TrueImage at the moment.

Is it better to disconnect the Internet too? Just in case some automatic updates interfere?

mm71 said:

Is it better to disconnect the Internet too? Just in case some automatic updates interfere?

Click to expand...

You shouldn't have to. This isn't like an install.

An In-Place Upgrade "compares" what is installed on the computer, with the ISO image.
Then, it overwrites only the Windows files, with clean copies from the ISO image.
This is how it "repairs" Windows while allowing you to keep your programs and personal files.

Should I click on "download updates, drivers and optional features" or not? Maybe it was an update that caused problems?

mm71 said:

Should I click on "download updates, drivers and optional features" or not? Maybe it was an update that caused problems?

Click to expand...

I would check for updates after the repair install.

mm71 said:

Should I click on "download updates, drivers and optional features" or not? Maybe it was an update that caused problems?

Click to expand...

Winuser said:

I would check for updates after the repair install.

Click to expand...

Yes. Always check for updates AFTER the In-Place Upgrade.

By the way... I know it asks about that when you do the In-Place Upgrade, but I think it ignores whatever you answer and just does it anyway. This is probably a good thing.

I always monitor my download and upload rates (bottom two numbers).
Last time I did an In-Place upgrade (Oct. 6th 2021), those two numbers were showing a serious amount of downloading, "while" I was doing the In-Place upgrade. And I had told it NOT to... download updates, drivers and optional features.
The downloading was occurring "after" it had started installing.
But it didn't seem to hurt anything.





So what was the moral of this story?
When discussing Microsoft you can always say: "Liar, liar, pants on fire".

Well, I did it and saw the progress all the way through the end, no errors or anything, but.... the problems persist and not even any of my personalizations have changed???
But Windows Update now has a lot of updates, so the upgrade did take place, but didn't fix my problems...

Sometimes, despite the hassle of reinstalling everything, doing a clean install is the only thing that works. I never upgrade for this very reason because I've always been leery of issues from one OS transferring over to the other so I just bite the bullet and do.

Is there a way to revert back all Dell updates without going back to factory defaults? Who knows, maybe the problems have been caused by one of their updates, Apparently QuickSet did that? But I don't have it, unfortunately, as I said before. If some people solved the sleep function problem with QuickSet, maybe it is really one of the Dell updates that caused the problem? Or maybe S0 failing to resume.
I have a backup and I have quite a few programs installed, but not as many as I had on my old laptop, and I could always try to go back to factory defaults just to see if it fixes the problem, and if it doesn't, I can then use the image backup..., but first I wanted to be sure I cannot fix the problem in any other way,

Ghot said:

Yes. Always check for updates AFTER the In-Place Upgrade.

By the way... I know it asks about that when you do the In-Place Upgrade, but I think it ignores whatever you answer and just does it anyway. This is probably a good thing.

I always monitor my download and upload rates (bottom two numbers).
Last time I did an In-Place upgrade (Oct. 6th 2021), those two numbers were showing a serious amount of downloading, "while" I was doing the In-Place upgrade. And I had told it NOT to... download updates, drivers and optional features.
The downloading was occurring "after" it had started installing.
But it didn't seem to hurt anything.


View attachment 19588


So what was the moral of this story?
When discussing Microsoft you can always say: "Liar, liar, pants on fire".

Click to expand...

Y'know, Ghot, I've found that most likely the internet activity you were seeing during installation was Microsoft reaching out and getting files from "home base". Not that it was searching for upgrades. Just my opinion . . .

As I didn't fix my problems anyway, I will let Windows update my system with the updates that were wiped out by the repair upgrade, and if I want to do a clean install or go back to factory defaults, I can do it later when I am sure there is no other option.