Specially for those who decide to go back in the 30 day time frame:
To go back, you'll need to:
- Keep everything in the windows.old and $windows.~bt folders after the upgrade.
- Remove any user accounts you added after the upgrade.
- Know the password you used to sign in to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 (if you used one).
- Have the USB drive you used to upgrade to Windows 10 (if you used one).
Actually the bit I found most interesting was the next bit:
.. because I've seen a lot of speculation that once you're past the 30 day point, even if you had a backup or installation media for Windows 7/8.x, if you went back, it wouldn't re-activate after the 30 day point had passed.If go back isn't available
- Check to see if you can restore your PC to factory settings. This will reinstall the version of Windows that came with your PC and remove personal files, apps and drivers you installed, and any changes you made to settings. Go to Settings > Update & security > Recovery > Reset this PC > Get started and look for Restore factory settings.
If you created a recovery drive before upgrading to Windows 10, you might be able to use it to restore factory settings (even if the option isn’t showing up in Settings). For more info, see Use a recovery drive to reinstall Windows.
- If you have installation media and a product key for your previous version of Windows, you can use them to go back. Get the details in Use installation media to reinstall Windows
Everything else I've seen from Microsoft suggests you only have 30 days to go back, but it isn't clear if they just mean the previous OS files will be deleted, or something more than that. This is the first official thing I've seen from Microsoft which suggests it may work after that point (because 'If Go Back isn't available' suggests it's past the 30 day point) although even then you could read it either way.
I've tried that 10 times in a row and no go.`It's different in Windows 10 - if the option to copy System Files works, it lets you completely reinstall Windows on a bare drive from the Recovery Drive. It's quite a nice feature when it works.
Snifferpro, I've found that sometimes if I retry a couple of times, the Recovery Drive creation may fail at first then work the second or third time, so it might be worth trying again.
Since there is no error information issued when attempting creation I can only assume that
this function has not been thoroughly tested by Microsoft.
There has to be a reason it won't let me create a Recovery Drive and that reason should be displayed
with the page that says it can't create a recovery drive.
This is very frustrating. The new Win 10 recovery options are non user friendly in that you can't
even get to issue an F8 at boot to get into safe mode without first jumping through hoops to tell
the system to go into recovery mode. You can't do this if your system will not boot, thus the reason for
the Recovery drive.
I can't believe I'm the only one with this issue.
No you aren't - I had a machine where I couldn't get it to work no matter how many times I tried.
In the end I reinstalled Windows which fixed it but it's hardly a practical solution. (I did wonder if, because it had been running older Insider builds on that machine, something had been left behind which broke the process.)
The basic Recovery Drive (without 'System Files') would at least give you a way to get into safe mode etc., but it isn't as useful as the full Recovery Drive.
Don't forget you can do a repair install which keeps your programs and data Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade
I did a repair install in Windows 8.1 and it worked fine to solve the problem I had.
Quote
The 30 days I believe. is the automatic disk cleanup of windows.old and ~bt folders(more disk space specially on things like tablets). But then again, now I'm guilty of speculation
