Update Later

I have Win 7 Pro (with Win 8 set up disks) have downloaded Win 10 and hate it. Fairly new laptop, good spec.

I would like to go back to Win 7 within the 30 days. Is it also possible to download the free Win 10, on usb stick, or similar, for installation again, say in 12 months time, or later. Thus retaining the option for free "upgrade"

Or somehow create a Win 10 recovery disk from the current o/s before I go back.

Wait before you go back to Windows 7... What is that you hate? If it is the new flat-simple look of the icons, there is a way to replace them all with those from Windows 7. Let us know and we'll give you instructions. You can also change the default start button and start menu to make it identical to Windows 7 . You can enable the desktop gadgets again, you can get the old desktop games (Solitaire, Minesweeper etc) back. There is a solution for everything. Just tell us what you want.

Well I have already upgraded another laptop about 2 months ago and had nothing but issues, none of which the forum have solved. On that machine, I am about to re-install Win 7 from scratch, so thanks for that Miscrosoft!

And my recent laptop is instantly having very similar problems.

Wireless VERY erratic, mouse pad slow, freezes. Odd pages just freeze. Long waits for boot up, with mystery black screens. M/s is hell bent on forcing us to use Onedrive and a M/s account to make it work well. I updated to win 10 and it immediately, without warning or option, decided to downlaod ALL 15GB of my onedrive files to the laptop! Oh and the glorious Cortana still does not work. Edge is a joke.

I do use onedrive but as a totally separate hard drive/back of some files, accessed to my satisfaction via Outlook.com. I do not need or desire its integration into Win 10. If I want to access files from anywhere it's easy, as it is!

I think M/s has spent more time competing with Google than giving us an acceptable and improved operating system. Frankly it is no better, and slower than Win 7. So I want to wait and maybe try next year, as I am sure there will be a huge upgrade SP1 ?? once M/s has listened to all these complaints and problems. Oops did I say M/s listens????

Windows/M/s are losing the plot. It's enough to make one move to Apple!

spapakons said:

Wait before you go back to Windows 7... What is that you hate? If it is the new flat-simple look of the icons, there is a way to replace them all with those from Windows 7. Let us know and we'll give you instructions. You can also change the default start button and start menu to make it identical to Windows 7 . You can enable the desktop gadgets again, you can get the old desktop games (Solitaire, Minesweeper etc) back. There is a solution for everything. Just tell us what you want.

OneDrive can be turned off. The problems with WiFi and touchpad are because their OEM drivers were replaced with "newer" Microsoft drivers that obviously do not work well. Download and install latest OEM drivers from notebook's support site. Other delays are due to useless software loading at startup. Press Win+R and type msconfig. Run it and then go to Services. Click to hide Microsoft services and then disable any third-party service you don't need. Then go at Startup and click to see startup applications. Disable anything you don't need. Restart and your computer should be faster.

spapakons said:

... If it is the new flat-simple look of the icons, there is a way to replace them all with those from Windows 7. Let us know and we'll give you instructions.

[OT] Well, I would like to have my Windows 7 Icons back. Could you please give me instructions? [/OT]

Temporarily disable your antivirus because you may get a false alarm about a trojan while downloading or running the file. If you have no antivirus and you use Windows Defender, disable that instead. Download Customizer God. Run it and extract the files to a folder. Now you can enable your antivirus again. Right-click on Customizer God and run as Administrator. Ignore the warning that Windows 10 is not supported yet. This means that the program cannot open the necessary files automatically. You can open them manually with CTRL+O.

To change the network and WiFi icons you need to modify the file pnidui.dll
To change the speaker volume icons you need to modify the file SndVolSSO.dll
To change the battery icons (for notebooks only) you need to modify the file batmeter.dll
To change almost everything else (including the folder icons) you need to modify the file imageres.dll

All files are in C:\Windows\System32. To get the icons from Windows 7 or 8.1 you need to open the respective file from Windows 7 or 8.1 installation and extract the icons to a folder. When you upgrade to Windows 10 these files are found in C:\Windows.old\Windows\System32

The procedure is the same for all files:

1) Press CTRL+O and browse to C:\Windows.old\Windows\System32. Open the Windows 7 or 8.1 version of the file you want to modify, say imageres.dll The program automatically backups the original file.
2) You see all the icons on the window. You may have to change view from images to icons, on top left.
3) Click the first icon, hold SHIFT and click the last icon to select all.
4) Click on the down triangle button at bottom right to reveal more actions, then click on Extract selected resources.
5) Extract all the icons to a folder and close Customizer God. This is to make sure you modify the correct file, so avoid opening two or more files at the same time.
6) Load Customizer God again (as Administrator) and browse to C:\Windows\System32. Open the respective Windows 10 file, that is imageres.dll
7) Click on the first icon, hold SHIFT and click on the last to select all.
8) Click on the Change button and browse to the folder where you extracted the icons. Every original icon will be replaced with the file having the same number. This is OK for all the icons if you took them from an earlier Windows version. If there is no file with that number, the icon remains unchanged.
9) Close Customizer God, logoff and login again to see changes.

Because icons can have same numbers in different system files, it is recommended to extract the icons of each file to a different folder. Repeat the procedure to replace the icons for network (pnidui.dll), battery (batmeter.dll) and volume (SndVolSSO.dll) by opening the relevant DLL file.

Warning! Don't try to open Explorer.exe to replace the icons, because this will affect digital signature and you won't be able to boot into Windows 10 again (error message that this file cannot run in this computer)! If you do this by accident (you better not), you need to access your hard disk from a Live CD or another computer and then delete the file Explorer.exe (new not working) and rename the file Explorer.exe.backup back to Explorer.exe I know that because I did it, but fortunately after renaming Explorer.exe.backup to Explorer.exe Windows 10 work OK again. Also for the same reason, the software will warn you and refuse to modify the file shell32.dll

I hope this is detailed enough to help you do it...

Did all that, now feels even slower! New drivers made no difference. WiFi drop is most annoying.

spapakons said:

OneDrive can be turned off. The problems with WiFi and touchpad are because their OEM drivers were replaced with "newer" Microsoft drivers that obviously do not work well. Download and install latest OEM drivers from notebook's support site. Other delays are due to useless software loading at startup. Press Win+R and type msconfig. Run it and then go to Services. Click to hide Microsoft services and then disable any third-party service you don't need. Then go at Startup and click to see startup applications. Disable anything you don't need. Restart and your computer should be faster.

@spapakons
Wow, thank you. :) I'll give it a try.