# Windows 10 - Can I get rid of it?



## JJBTT (Feb 1, 2016)

Hey all, 
I'm hoping there is someone out there that is a bit handy with IT etc.

I recently got a new laptop (a Dell if that matters) and foolishly installed Windows 10. I figured that it would be ok, as the computer was new, and not full of rubbish. 
Anyway, its practically made it un-useable. Is there a way I can go back to the Windows 8.1 that was installed previously - WITHOUT the installation disc? Ive missed the 30 day roll back option too.

Its driving me to the point of going and buying another laptop without Windows 10 on.

Cheers in advance!

J


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## firediamonduk (Dec 24, 2013)

Reset the laptop back to factory if you have the backup discs or an old backup somewhere

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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

Hi, If you installed it less than a month ago, you should be able to return it to W8. Go to Control Pane/Recovery. 
If you can find Control Panel.that is :lol: :roll: 
W10 much better than W8 once set up correctly.
Hoggy.


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## JJBTT (Feb 1, 2016)

Hoggy said:


> Hi, If you installed it less than a month ago, you should be able to return it to W8. Go to Control Pane/Recovery.
> If you can find Control Panel.that is :lol: :roll:
> W10 much better than W8 once set up correctly.
> Hoggy.


Cheers again Hoggy! Problem is I've gone past the 30 days so that option isn't there. 
It's made my laptop run sooooo damn slow, what do I need to do to get it running better is how do I set it up correctly?

Or thinking about it, could it be the kaspersky security thing slowing it right down?


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## JJBTT (Feb 1, 2016)

firediamonduk said:


> Reset the laptop back to factory if you have the backup discs or an old backup somewhere
> 
> That's just it, I don't have the discs - gone walk about since leaving my last job.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

Hi, Having W8 you must have minimum of 4 GBs of Ram.. 8GB is better but should be O.K. with 4
Ctrl & Shift together + Esc will bring up task manager & you can see what progs are using up the the processor & Ram.
Right click any Live Tiles you have & turn them off.
So many things too do & so easy, but impossible to put into words. 
Otherwise if you made the 16 GB recovery drive, take it back to Factory conditions & W8. 
What Dell model laptop is it ?

Hoggy.


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Always do a backup before major change. I went back to Windows 7 after coaxing Windows 10 to install. I found 10 full of bugs (well, ones I discovered by doing things that I do) so as I'd created a mirror backup of Windows 7 it was an easy restore.

Check out your oldest restore point (prior to 10)

Regards,
John


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

John-H said:


> Always do a backup before major change. I went back to Windows 7 after coaxing Windows 10 to install. I found 10 full of bugs (well, ones I discovered by doing things that I do) so as I'd created a mirror backup of Windows 7 it was an easy restore.
> 
> Check out your oldest restore point (prior to 10)
> 
> ...


Hi, When updating to W10 I'm sure W8 restore points are deleted after 1 month...Microsoft are in control.
Hoggy.


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## firediamonduk (Dec 24, 2013)

I have Windows 10 on an old laptop and seems to run just as well as it did on W7...

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## fut1a (Dec 28, 2006)

JJBTT said:


> Hey all,
> I'm hoping there is someone out there that is a bit handy with IT etc.
> 
> I recently got a new laptop (a Dell if that matters) and foolishly installed Windows 10. I figured that it would be ok, as the computer was new, and not full of rubbish.
> ...


I feel your pain. I am in exactly the same boat................Windows 10 is a nightmare and you should be able to sue Microsoft.

I have an expensive laptop that Win 10 has made a bag of crap.

Not sure what your problems are but mine are that most of the time I can't connect using wifi I have to use an ethernet cable.

The page restores down sometimes when I click on anything but restore down and it's driving me NUTS.

It was running a lot slower but I have resolved this now.


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

fut1a said:


> I feel your pain. I am in exactly the same boat................Windows 10 is a nightmare and you should be able to sue Microsoft.
> I have an expensive laptop that Win 10 has made a bag of crap.
> Not sure what your problems are but mine are that most of the time I can't connect using wifi I have to use an ethernet cable.
> The page restores down sometimes when I click on anything but restore down and it's driving me NUTS.
> It was running a lot slower but I have resolved this now.


Hi, You can't stop windows updates now, so it should have done an update which normally cures the WiFi connection prob.
WiFi connection dropping out was one of the first probs with W10 "upgrade" 
Hoggy.


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

Hi, You can buy recovery media from laptop manufacturer usually approx £50 depending on Model, or Windows 8 with license approx £100. 
Hoggy.


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

Hi, I have lots of Acer Recovery Media & a few other makes depending on model. 
Most Recovery Media have to be copied to 16GB memory sticks now, not DVDs.
Hoggy.


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Hoggy said:


> John-H said:
> 
> 
> > Always do a backup before major change. I went back to Windows 7 after coaxing Windows 10 to install. I found 10 full of bugs (well, ones I discovered by doing things that I do) so as I'd created a mirror backup of Windows 7 it was an easy restore.
> ...


Oh yes that's right. I took a clone copy of the Windows 7 drive before hand just in case but I transferred back before the month was up.


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## Bartsimpsonhead (Aug 14, 2011)

This usually works for me&#8230;


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## corradoman (Sep 11, 2010)

Mine keeps pestering me to update to 10, but I think this old Toshiba piece of trash laptop will detonate :lol: if I do


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## ZephyR2 (Feb 20, 2013)

With a Dell all the original OS and installed programs should be available on a recovery partition on your hard drive, usually drive D:. By following Dell's instructions you should be able to reinstate your computer to its factory condition, along with Win 8, regardless of how long has expired since you installed Win 10.
You will of course lose all data and programs on the computer so you would need to make a back up first and make sure you have all your critical program disks etc.
My HP laptop crashed big time about 4 months after upgrading from 8.1 to 10 and had to reinstate it back to factory set up with 8.1 and then download and reinstall 10 from scratch. However I could have left it in 8.1 if I'd wanted.
I think the 30 day option from Windows is just to allow a seamless downgrade without losing everything on your computer.


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## JJBTT (Feb 1, 2016)

ZephyR2 said:


> With a Dell all the original OS and installed programs should be available on a recovery partition on your hard drive, usually drive D:. By following Dell's instructions you should be able to reinstate your computer to its factory condition, along with Win 8, regardless of how long has expired since you installed Win 10.
> You will of course lose all data and programs on the computer so you would need to make a back up first and make sure you have all your critical program disks etc.
> My HP laptop crashed big time about 4 months after upgrading from 8.1 to 10 and had to reinstate it back to factory set up with 8.1 and then download and reinstall 10 from scratch. However I could have left it in 8.1 if I'd wanted.
> I think the 30 day option from Windows is just to allow a seamless downgrade without losing everything on your computer.


Hey thanks everyone for your input, I'm glad I'm not the only one disliking W10, I'll have a look for Dells instructions. Like a numpty I didn't do a back up prior to the update, as I'd literally just received the laptop and had done nothing on it, at all except connect to wifi. As a result, the earliest back up point is when W10 updated itself.


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## miTTzee (Dec 8, 2015)

HideHi - my commiserations to you guys with all your problems with windoze. 

Almost 20 years ago I was in the same boat, daily pulling my hair out
trying to fix windoze. [smiley=bigcry.gif] Never got the thing to run properly, so can
I suggest you try your hand at Linux. Don't run away at the mention 
of Linux as there are several advantages that may useful to you.
Firstly, it's FREE. No more getting ripped off by Microsoft. Also it's
basically the same as running windoze, but easier. 8)

So don't be afraid of change - jump in and try it. :idea: Can I suggest anyone
that would like a looksee, try Ubuntu live. Get hold of a cd and stick it
in, if you don't like it then you don't have to download it. Simples.

OK, lecture over - hope it helps someone.

miTTzee :wink:


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## IC_HOTT (May 29, 2010)

JJBTT said:


> I recently got a new laptop (a Dell if that matters) and foolishly installed Windows 10.
> Anyway, its practically made it un-useable. Is there a way I can go back to the Windows 8.1


You're kidding surely - it's win 8.1 that found unusable -couldn't do or find a damn thing on it so rarely used my Lenovo laptop.

Put win 10 on last week - revelation - back to a useable laptop - which I now understand why 10 was brought out .....


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## barry_m2 (Jun 29, 2015)

IC_HOTT said:


> [Put win 10 on last week - revelation - back to a useable laptop - which I now understand why 10 was brought out .....


Yep, I'm a bit surprised at a lot of these comments. 10 is a basically a better version of 8.1. Personally I've not seen any bugs or such like with W10 and I use it day in day out at work and home.

I even have a 7 year old Dell laptop, minimum basic spec, and it runs W10 without any problem what so ever.


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

I think it depends what you are doing. Just as an example; trying to view a photograph stored on my phone connected by USB. I navigate to the file, double click and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't and I got a message saying incomparable file type. It's a jpg :roll: Windows 7 worked fine 100% of the time.

For larger files like videos I got the swirling circle of dots with no message about what was going on or how long it would take. Windows 7 said "downloading" and gives you a progress bar. Sometimes the swirling dots would carry on indefinitely. A guy at worksaid he left it for over an hour to see what it would eventually do and gave up.

I'm sure they will iron out the bugs in time but because of issues like this and other issues with the interface I went back to Windows 7. I may try 10 again if it's improved as I kept a clone copy :wink:


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

Hi, Every PC is different, "upgrading" to W10 works on some & not on others.
Pre-installed W10 is fine & so much better than W8. 
Unable to turn off windows updates will probably cause more probs in the future.
Hoggy.


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## ZephyR2 (Feb 20, 2013)

JJBTT said:


> Hey all,
> I'm hoping there is someone out there that is a bit handy with IT etc.
> 
> I recently got a new laptop (a Dell if that matters) and foolishly installed Windows 10. I figured that it would be ok, as the computer was new, and not full of rubbish.
> ...


Have you done all your drivers and software updates since going up to Windows 10? Outdated drivers will cause a whole range of problems.


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## Dash (Oct 5, 2008)

My Sony laptop has a few problems with W10, especially around installing updates. Had a nightmare with it initially and the mouse, but all that's been resolved now.

Runs fine on my desktop. The update in November sorted most of the major problems, pretty much everything else is going to be a quirk with the drivers for your particular brand of whatever. So it's well worth going to W10, but check all your components have drivers available if you didn't buy a "Windows 10 ready" computer, and yeah, do a backup first so if anything isn't compatible you can roll back.

Windows 8, whilst had some annoyances with the start menu (greatly improved with 8.1) did have a lot of changes under the skin which makes it a lot less resource hungry than Windows 7. It's actually a damn good OS with a crappy shell. Windows 10 has improved on it, but once again failed to really crack the start-menu thing. It's more like Windows 7, which should keep some people happy but there was a middle ground which would have been far better.

Still, if you don't have any compatibility problems (more likely on a laptop) then W10 is a no-brainer. Just be sure to turn off all the things that report back to Microsoft all the time.


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## fut1a (Dec 28, 2006)

If Microsoft fixed the wifi issue I wish someone would tell my laptop. I have just been messing about for three hrs trying to get this thing to work on wifi and write this mail, it will work for a bit and then stop again.

It will say one or more protocols are missing on this computer or the gateway is not available, it's a complete pain in the ass.

I found 8.1 OK once you installed classic shell that is, and got the start button back.


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## Samoa (Apr 4, 2014)

There's a few challenges I've had & resolved to sort out performance issues

1. Windows does some memory cacheing on shutdown - you can turn it off which makes it shutdown & startup slower, but stops it from hanging
2. File explorer - turn off the Windows search feature
3. Cache min & Max - manually set it using custom to max recommended by Windows
4. Windows update under advanced options - tinkering with turning off 'finding other devices' helps

... there's also a backdoor to accelerate resources for Windows update

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