How to downgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 10

[RV_]

I have been reasonably happy with my Lenovo AIO 27" QHD system since last year's fiasco with 11 suddenly using all the memory and CPU thus causing numerous crashes. Very complicated fix. It stays 11 since I found the offending settings with 11 as it has the resources to run it very fast indeed. It was fine for a few months and an automatic MoBo update messed it up from Intel I found. But if I decide to take it back these are the steps I will take as I am taking with the 24" Project build I am doing now.

I am about to do just that with a Dell 24" AIO FHD touchscreen i7/16GB/256GB M.2 I am about to install and a 1TB storage SATA 2.5" SSD.

The one I am refurbishing is a top shelf system sold with the least they could put in it to sell came with 10 and was upgraded to 11 badly and it is not going back. It ran so slowly on 11 that I realized it was just not equipped stock for anything other than basics. Great chassis and CPU graphics just too little RAM and a slow 5400 rpm HDD!

It has an 9th gen i7 8700T 8core CPU, and had one 8GB stick of DDR4 RAM and a 1 TB 2.5" HDD. It also has an empty M.2 drive slot I filled with one from my other Dell to test and the speed got much better.

I had a spare 8GB Stick of DDR 4 I installed in the empty slot bringing it to 16GB 3200 RAM I bought a new take off 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD,  and will do a fresh install of Windows 10 Home on that SSD. It already runs like a scalded cat compared to when I got it with the HDD and little ram.

I'll be booting from a flash drive which involves some settings changes to disable TPM and set it to legacy for the fresh install and then after setting TPM and secure boot back on.

Excerpt:

"Although you can easily upgrade a Windows 10 PC to Windows 11, preserving installed apps, settings, and data files, you can't do the reverse. If you want to "downgrade" from Windows 11 to Windows 10, you have to do a clean install, which requires backing up and restoring your data files and reinstalling all your apps. But your license for Windows 11 will suffice to activate Windows 10 (and vice versa), which means you'll still have the option to upgrade to Windows 11 later, after Microsoft has (one hopes) fixed the things that are annoying you right now.

If this is a new PC that came with Windows 11 preinstalled, you might want to think twice about whether you really want to do this. It's possible you'll encounter glitches and hardware incompatibilities when you install Windows 10, and those problems might be even more annoying than whatever issues you have with Windows 11.

If, on the other hand, the PC was originally designed to run Windows 10, your chances of successfully installing Windows 10 are much better. In any case, you should make a complete backup of your system before going any further. (For recommendations of third-party software, including some excellent free options, see "Best backup software (2022).")

The ideal way to do a clean install is to download a Windows 10 recovery image made specifically for your PC model. See this article for instructions on how to find out whether this solution is available for your PC: "How to get a free Windows (or Linux) recovery image for your OEM PC."

Whenever i do major changes I always make a full system image I can restore on an external drive. That way if I goof I can easily go back to where I started and do it again. Or just go back if I was downgrading from a system, that came with 11 to 10. If it does not like it I can load the system image and all is as it was before I started. Images give me a chance to do-over if needed.The steps are in the rest of the article on how to get the Windows 10 image and install it on a system that came with 11. Mine came with 10 and does not like 11. So the downgrade back to 10 should go perfectly. But pay attention that going from 11, on a system that came with 11 from the factory could create problems like the one I am refurbishing had when it was upgraded from 10 to 11.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-downgrade-from-windows-11-to-windows-10/?ftag=TRE834f6fe&bhid={%24external_id}&mid={%24MESSAGE_ID}&cid={%24contact_id}

Safe Travels!

 

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by RV_