Questions about rolling back a Win10 upgrade

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LangaList Plus

Questions about rolling back a Win10 upgrade

By Fred Langa A reader wonders: After rolling back Windows 10 (undoing the upgrade), will he have the original Win7/8 product key? Plus: A biometric/fingerprint sign-in fails after a Win10 upgrade, and a reader’s old PC becomes uselessly slow after an upgrade — to Win7!

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/langalist-plus/questions-about-rolling-back-a-win10-upgrade/ (opens in a new window/tab).

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I have one more version of the upgrade-to-Win10 saga. I have a Vista computer. I bit the bullet and bought Win10. There were a few strange moments during the install process. I ended up with the following behavior. If I let the computer boot normally, Vista loads. If I boot with the Win10 disk in the drive, Win10 loads. Strange dual-boot system!

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Wondering, if in a dual boot Win7/Win10 scenario, you are really only running one copy of Windows at a time and as such are using your license appropriately. I didn’t read the legalese (I am already too old) but I wouldn’t feel bad doing it….

Running in a VPC has never really worked out for me. As a PS user, I need all the cycles I can get and giving them up typically hurts.

Just a thought

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Wow! An answer to my question months after it was asked.

In the meantime, I decided I wasn’t willing to risk my working Windows 7 installation, so I bought a new Windows 7 license for $60, installed Windows 7 using that license and upgraded the result to Windows 10, all without touching my original Windows 7. In effect, I bought Windows 10 (Home) for half price instead of upgrading for free.

I now primarily use Windows 10, but keep my original Windows 7 current “just in case”.

I occasionally boot the Windows 7 that served as my upgrade vehicle just to see if it is still activated. So far the answer has always yes.

I now suspect that I could have upgraded, then restored my original Windows 7 without a problem though I do understand and always suspected the gray area regarding the license issue. I also don’t know for sure that if I regularly used the upgraded Windows 7 it wouldn’t at some point be detected as a system that had been upgraded and be deactivated. I doubt it, but I don’t know for sure.

I echo the sentiment above that I would be using only one version of Windows at a time and wouldn’t feel very guilty about it if it worked though I do understand that it might not be completely compliant with the license.

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