I need windows for work reasons. I have mint on my home machines. I just don’t want 11. Is there any tool out there to force a downgrade? or will I have to do a fresh install? Trying to avoid that since work software.
You can only “roll back” to 10 if you just upgraded from 10 to 11. If you bought something new then you can’t “roll back” to something that was never there.
Also if it’s a newer laptop expect a lot of things to be broken or work poorly. A lot of new hardware has come out post Windows 11.
Format a USB stick with a Linux distro.
Use that Linux’s partition system to delete the Windows partition entirely.
Yes you will have to do a fresh install.
With windows, is always better to do a fresh install windows is super buggy and unofficially forcing a downgrade (if possible) will likely be a big headache in the long run.
I’m not sure about your company IT, but they may not allow you to use windows 10 if they are not paying for extended security updates.
Rollback is only possible after an upgrade from 10 to 11 but before the Windows.old directory (a snapshot of system files and configurations immediately before the upgrade) is purged. After that, a fresh install is the only option. No tool can claim to reliably downgrade Windows since 10 would not know how to handle newly-introduced configurations and data from 11, especially in the registry.
There is no way to ‘downgrade’ a fresh installation. Only an installation that was done as an upgrade from Windows 10 can be downgraded, it has to be done within 10 days of the upgrade and that is possible thanks to the Windows.old folder that gets retained for that period.
In your case, you’re looking at a clean install. Once you’ve got your installation media ready, you can make your life substantially easier by using DISM to extract the drivers and integrate them into the WIM file. I’ve had a few laptops end up with no network drivers, no keyboard / touchpad drivers, and no USB drivers - leaving OOBE inoperable.
True what people are saying about no ability to roll back, but if you want to install windows 10 to the device, you used to be able to buy 1 time activation keys for stupid cheap (under $10). Then you just have to flash a USB with the windows 10 installer ISO and use the key when you get to that point.
The downside of a one time activation is that if you ever brick the OS or some such, you have to buy another key and can’t reuse the original you purchased.
Off topic but in the middle of a PC build. I’ve not used 11 but may need it and planning a dual boot. Is it possible to remove all the spyware and ai junk or will it just repopulate itself?
