Windows 10: restore win7 using windows.old and windows recovery usb drive?

I was exploring the recovery drive options, one is to revert the OS to an earlier version. I assume you select that and point it to a windows.old file which is the old windows 7?

I can not find a great WMC replacement for our media PC.
But I like win10 too and dont want to loose it.

What I want to do is, get a 2TB drive. Copy windows.old to the drive. Pull the win10 hard drive.
Boot the win10 recovery usb drive and restore the win7 OS so I can use WMC again with windows 7.
WMC should work a few more years until the program guide will no longer be supported by Microsoft.

Then I want to be able to dual boot win7 or win10. I should be able to dual boot them, if I install linux to a small partition.

Right now I can dual boot win7 and win10 and ubuntu on the PC I use in my office.

If I can do this, I will almost always be using win7, until WMC fails. By then, maybe a decent WMC like TV program will be working great with win10.

Will that idea work?

:)

 

can't restore win 7 after upgrading to win 10

on 9/26 I upgraded win7 to win10 using the online MCT tool on my C: partition. everything seemed to work fine. I then created a win10 ISO DVD using MCT tool and installed it on my D: partition. again, it worked OK. I now have 2 win10 partitions . I would
now like to revert my C: partition back to win7. However when I go to the Recovery option it says it cannot restore win7 because the files have been removed from the PC. However, when I go to the C: partition I see a windows.old folder with 33gb and 33,000
files.

1 - Is there any way I can verify that these are the win7 files (it was created on 9/26, the day I upgraded to win10)?

2 - If so, is there a way I can get win10 Recovery to recognize them so it can revert back to win7?

3 - Is there a reason that by using the MCT tool to upgrade to win10 instead of using windows upgrade caused it not to be able to restore win7? I have a friend who upgraded win7 to win10 with windows upgrade and he restored his win7 with no problems.

4 - Is there any fix available so I can revert back to win7 using the windows.old files?

9/29 - Have also found 2 hidden folders $Windows.~BT AND $Windows.~WS on C: drive along with windows.old folder. Can anyone tell me why Win10 Recovery option can't find them to restore to Win7? or how to contact a Microsoft Support Engineer by email who
might be able to help me with this?

 

"backup and restore win 7" or "recovery" for win10, which one to use on Win10?

still confused about system image (win7 terminology) vs recovery on usb (win10 terminology)...

we have 3 machines, some with win7, some with win10. which backup/restore/recovery/system image ??? program should I use to ensure that I have backups/restore/recovery/system image ??? available in case of pc failure?

the terms used in win7 and win10 are very confusing.

If the preference is to use "recovery" in Win10, why is there an option to choose "backup and restore Windows 7" available in Win10

also, re win10, hate to use up a large flash drive just for a recovery in win10 (when creating a recovery in win10, it wipes out all other files on the flash drive). Will the recovery option still work from a flash drive with other files on the drive?

 

Go Back to the Previous Version of Windows in Windows 10
No, it's an automatic process aimed at restoring whatever the previous build was you had.

Thus if you upgraded from 1607 to 1703, then in the 10 days following (until Windows.old is automatically deleted) you could revert to 1607.

If, less than 10 days ago, you upgraded from Win 7, you would restore Win 7 in place of your existing build.

Assuming you had upgraded to '10 from '7 in the last 10 days, your only chance of having one disk with '10 on it and another with '7 would be to clone what you have now, then restore '7. I'm not sure how that would help you though.

 

I upgraded from win7 to win10 build 1709 less than 10 days ago.
But I had read when installing win10 over win7 I had 30 days to decide if I wanted to go back right during the win 10 upgrade.

I have 2 goals here, restore win7, basically use it again just to run WMC.
Keep win10 because someday WMC will become unusable, no guide data. And I have a legal copy of win10 right now on this PC linked to my microsoft account.

I tried to copy windows.old, and it fails, but I did find a program that says it can do this, and I think ubuntu live usb could do that too.

Backup Windows.old Folder for Downgrading to Previous Windows Version

 

The time to revert used to be 30 days, but changed to 10 days a couple of builds back.

What do you hope to do with Windows.old in isolation?

 

Run win7 with it, as in use the windows recovery drive tools to restore it?

OR, clone the drive.
Then run the go back tool.
It has been less than 10 days.
https://www.backup-utility.com/windo...s-10-0528.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That backup program will back it up as a compressed file.

Ended up cloning the entire drive.
I just started, when done, I will run the downgrade to earlier os.

Copying windows.old was tough. And the windows recovery USB drive wont use it on a blank drive.
To manually copy, I had to zip the windows.old file first, then it could be copied. The normal copy command in windows and linux could not copy certain special files.