Windows 10 to Windows 7

Is this easy to do on a laptop that came with w 10 installed from new?

Do I need to trash everything and just install W7 from scratch?
Anything physically different in pic architecture to prevent this fresh install working?

W10 is not working in any way for me, it needs to go. W7 worked, was more stable, and that’s what I would like to get back to.

No discussion on how good W10 is, it’s history. I knew I should have bought a Mac but hey ho… W7 it will be.

Not prepared to put up with constant updates, forgetting settings, turning itself off and other Microsoft W10 bs.

Gets beer and popcorn 🙂

Not sure OP, if you upgrade W7->W10 you can wind back. Otherwise I think you have to find some oem installation disks, could be a world of pain with licence tagged to hardware ?

I’d do a clean install of W10 before trying anything else.

I’m finding it faster, more stable and generally more pleasant to use than W7.

You could probably buy a licence for W7 pretty cheap, or just pirate it.

That’s pretty much your options.

you should just able to buy a licence (£25ish), download an install, put it on a bootable usb (tools freely available), then nuke it from orbit, and install 7.

you’ll have a bunch of updates to do i expect…..

suggest you just buy the white thing. 😈

It’s a laptop that came with w10 from new. I have an oem w7 disc and key.

Formatting the w10 and a w7 install, is this a viable option. There is nothing about w10 i want to keep… And no discussion to be had on that one.

AS above, you can buy W7 for cheap.

But you’re doing the wrong thing 🙂

Do I need to trash everything and just install W7 from scratch?

Yes, or you could set it up dual-boot.. some of the hardware might be too new to be supported in Win7.

(Ex-wife bought a laptop with Vista, I wiped it and installed Win7 and could never get audio drivers for it.)

Do tell us more about why W10 is so bad.

I’m in the mood for popcorn.

There is nothing about w10 i want to keep…

Don’t do the W7 thing then. It’s 99% the same and you’ll be horribly disappointed.

Eat your popcorn, kick back, have a beer.

It’s not, for me, a viable platform for a functioning laptop. Other people may have different views, mine is just misery. For weeks. And that’s with a software developer as a partner.

The end.

Scotroutes, w7 was, for our user experience, heaps better.

If it’s unstable send the damn thing back. Chances are you’ve got a hardware fault anyway. There’s no reason a new laptop should be unstable out of the box. I did this with my latest work laptop – installed Ubuntu, it kept falling over, put Windows back on, still kept falling over. It was bad RAM.

actually the only thing i don’t like with win10 is the frequency and heaviness of updates. There have been so many in the last month it’s crazy. But I do like that for most people it just happens

+1 for W10 here too. More stable imho than 7 or 8 & it’s interface ‘feels’ slicker. You’re not averse to change, by any chance?

You’re not averse to change, by any chance?

That happens quite a lot as one gets older….

No, embrace change and also embrace intuitive and stuff that works…

Constantly turns itself off instead of sleeping, constantly forgets the last settings, constantly downloads the updates and switches off then needs resetting….

I’ve had it with W10 and trying to get it sorted. There may be a fix, I can’t find it. I’ve had enough. I’ve reached that point of not investing any more time in it.

It’s a w7 downgrade or give it away for a donation to charity.
Or run over it with the car.

Updated to win 10 when it came out. Was doing a kaspersky update late at night so set it to switch off the computer when completed. Woke up in the morning to a black screen and some message about no operating system. Tried all I could think of and had to give up. Really should have backed up all the new music and photos. My friend gave me his old iMac so I didn’t think about it for a few months until my girlfriends computer broke. I bought a copy of windows 7 and installed it, worked fine again. Did end up putting win 10 on it again. Ended up with win7 and and win10 on the same pc. She uses 10 and it’s been fine…but for how long?

I think I can see the problem here….

Constantly turns itself off instead of sleeping, constantly forgets the last settings, constantly downloads the updates and switches off then needs resetting….

Are you sure it’s windows 10, doesn’t really sound like any of the 4 copies I have running here… But yes wipe it and start again if you really want.

It’s not, for me, a viable platform for a functioning laptop. Other people may have different views, mine is just misery. For weeks. And that’s with a software developer as a partner.

Have you asked them to take a look at it?

But seriously I think my desktop has been on for the last week without being turned off… there is something set wrong

I have one out of many win10 machines that is like that. It went straight back to the supplier. I have also had win xp, 7, 8,8.1 equally crap. As has been said already, it might be 10 but it really doesn’t look like it 🙁

Yes it’s w10… Screen looks like a windows phone with the tiles on the screen…

This is W10, mostly default appearance apart from colours.

You can call up the Windows Version function by typing “winver” into the start/search box.

Sounds like my old win7 machine before i repaired it and installed win10.

(OK, load of new drivers, updated BIOS, new PSU, new SSD, “repaired”)

It gets switched off when updates ask me to do so. About once a month.

You need to get it repaired.

I love Win 10. Updates are left to auto. The PC’s usually shut down over the weekend but left run / hibernate etc over the week.

Besides quick access being fairly useless (but not enough to research reg editing it to make it better) I like it. I skipped Win 8x. I don’t miss 7.

If it were me, I’d do a clean install of Win 10. Get rid of the bloat ware on new computers before regressing to an OS that lost mainstream support nearly 2 years ago.

That’s 1607 (14939)

What he said. Clean install, no OEM rubbish. Install drivers from laptop vendor for your particular model.

Windows 7 is dinosaur.

Is this easy to do on a laptop that came with w 10 installed from new?

Probably not. Given that you’re asking for computer advice on a bike forum and don’t seem to have figured out how to customize W10, I think you have bugger all chance of doing the downgrade yourself.

Easy now, lets’ see if we can help him!

Firstly – run winver and tell us the version and build and we’ll go from there.

I’m off out to run people over learn to drive*

Will drop back in later, I’m sure we can be of help.

*no, I am not 17, just stubborn….until now.

Win ver 1607, finally.. as it had switched itself off again and needed 2 restarts with black screens…

I develop on Windows 10 and got it on my home PCs – no instability here and it gets stressed as a development machine – often using > 90 memory, etc.

HP at work, Dell laptop at home.

What laptop are you trying to run it on ?

As with most of the posts above, I’m not convinced that moving from W10 to W7 is a very smart idea, especially if you have underly hardware issues. I’m wondering if you do have W10, as the tiles only appear on the start menu, not ala W8’s metro desktop (hateful but you can ‘fix’ it) – [edit: you version number does suggest W10]. So really W10 looks like an update W7 install, and definitely works well. I’m happy to install it older kit, as it work as well as W7 and supposedly has no end of life issue like all the previous version of windows. I know the updates can be a pain, especially on a fresh machine, but once that initial pain is over, it should be relatively easy and not cause issues unless you never restart your machine (or allow them to install on restarts).

You don’t need to do a fresh install of W10, to get it ‘fresh’, before wasting money or time on W7 try:

Navigate to Settings. …
Select “Update & security”
Click Recovery in the left pane. …
Click Get started under Reset this PC.
Click either “Keep my files” or “Remove everything,” depending on whether you want to keep your data files intact.
I’d then look to update all the drivers with the latest version available

If you are set on moving back to W7, make sure you know what all the devices are within your device manager, as your pc/laptop manufacturers will have the relevant drivers along side their ‘crap’, so unless you know what you need, you’ll potentially end up loading their bloatware too. I’d suggest taking screen shots of your device manager (with all device expanded to show exactly what devices you have) so that you can locate all the relevant drivers

I have had minimal issues with W7 and W10 – on our own machines and the 8 in the office at work. They vary from i7/12gb architect powerhouses to a spare old Dell Pentium/4GB.

I spent the last few days away with a colleague from another office who had a shiny new laptop that was slooooow and falling over a few times. I spent an evening in the bar (yay, go me!) re-installing a clean W10. The speed difference was incredible, and seems a cleaner, simpler OS. It was purely the Acer crap (not as bad as the Asus or even worse, Lenovo crapware that they all came with) that was popping up with updates and issues.
Also, another colleague who had set it up originally had managed to both accept the bundled ‘free’ McAfee and install our company eset over the top…That was the biggest difference. Personally, I would just use Defender.

Having been positive about W10, I have spent the last few weeks watching multiple updates on all the machines, slowing them and network while it updates…grrrr

Constantly turns itself off instead of sleeping,

That’s a setting. Power and sleep settings -> save power when I’m away. It attempts to hibernate your PC when it thinks you’re not going to use it.

constantly forgets the last settings

Like what?

constantly downloads the updates and switches off then needs resetting….

After the initial updating that should only be once a month. You can tell it not to want restarting when you are using it – look in windows update settings for ‘active hours’

It’s definitely hands down better than W7.

Oh and bin Kaspersky immedieately. W10 has bulit-in antivirus.

needed 2 restarts with black screens

You have either a driver, configuration or hardware problem.

1st stop would be a clean reinstall. BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST REGARDLESS OF “Keep my data and reinstall” promises. If possible, make two copies for your backup.

I develop on Windows 10 and got it on my home PCs – no instability here and it gets stressed as a development machine – often using > 90 memory, etc.

Mine gets like that every time i do video processing, CPU and memory both running near enough flat out for ~24 hours (it’s not got enough memory really, or a very good processor, i need to upgrade) but it’s stable. Never crashes.

Just gets hot. Really really hot. (yes i have a big cooler)

Its an HP Pavillion i7 with a ssd and 1tb hard drive.
Running Windows Defender, no other AV

Used for MS Word and mainly connected to a TV through HDMI for watching BBC etc via Channel Hopper…

Settings all checked as above mentioned. Doesn’t sleep, just turns off despite what settings I choose… forgets its connected to a TV / 2nd monitor…

maybe a fresh install is the way to go

Thanks for the suggestions. Its like the thread that comes on here everyone and again:
Is there a bike you never loved / got on with..?

needed 2 restarts with black screens

Be patient, last two big updates of W10 did this on install and restart, it just takes a few minutes of black screen.

As with most of the posts above, I’m not convinced that moving from W10 to W7 is a very smart idea, especially if you have underly hardware issues.

If I can just pick up on this,

If it is somehow physically faulty and you hose the OS, you’re in for a world of pain when trying to make a warranty claim. I’d want to be very sure that these black screens are just impatience rather than an underlying issue before flattening it.

Given that, no offence, most of your issues seem to be around settings that can you change but haven’t, if I were you and was hell bent on Windows 7 I’d be tempted to swap out the hard drive (good excuse to buy an SSD) rather than wipe the existing one. Then if you do make a pig’s bladder of it or if find that half of your hardware doesn’t work cos there’s no driver support for it, it’s trivial to revert back to a working system.