Windows 10 Downgrade Scenario - Questions

dlwmacgregor · 11 Aug 2015

I upgraded to Windows 10 on July 30th from Win7.
Before I did I cloned my Win7 disk to another spare drive.
Yesterday I accidently booted into that drive and Windows tried to upgrade that drive (and failed) or so says the Windows Update Log.
So here's the question...
If I were to downgrade my Win10 to Win7 on the "live" drive and something went wrong and I had to restore from the cloned drive, would it keep trying to re-install Win10 or would it be smart enough to know that I had at least attempted a downgrade?
OR
If I just simply didn't want Win10 anymore, what would be the effect of just restoring my Win7 drive from the cloned backup...period, without trying to downgrade?

Ztruker · 11 Aug 2015

Depends on what shape the Windows 7 drive is in after the aborted 10 upgrade. Whatever it is it what it will be when you restore it to the other drive.

lmaneke · 11 Aug 2015

You can downgrade back to Windows 7 from Windows 10.

Click Start Menu

Click Settings

Click Update & Security

Click Recovery

Click Return to Windows 7

The upgrade saves your previous version of Windows that you can revert back to in a 30 day period. Your settings will revert back to the way they were before the upgrade, like nothing ever happened.

dlwmacgregor · 12 Aug 2015

Ztruker said:

Depends on what shape the Windows 7 drive is in after the aborted 10 upgrade. Whatever it is it what it will be when you restore it to the other drive.

To clarify, I wouldn't be attempting an upgrade, but a downgrade. I cloned my Win7 on July 27th, one day before the automatic downloading started but I did have the "Get Windows 10" icon, so the clone also has it. I just want to make sure that somewhere down the road if I have to use that cloned backup to restore my "live" OS that it won't continuously try to upgrade to Win10.