I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
real one?

Nil wrote:
> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
> the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
> for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
> don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
> is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
> my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
> happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
> upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
> real one?

As near as I can tell, this topic is "stateless".

You can see in the picture I took today, Windows 7
and Windows 10 can live in multiboot harmony. This is
an MSDOS partitioned disk, legacy boot, with Windows 10 W21H1
on the last partition. I can boot to either of the last
two, and remain activated just fine. Note that Windows 7
activation was "sensitive to RAID driver", as the Optiplex
defaults to RAID ON, and I conformed to the existing mess
rather than start over again. The RAID ON situation did not
affect Windows 10 activation.

https://i.postimg.cc/C14T3J9D/legacy.gif

Before I installed that, I created the empty Win10 partition
before hand, booted with the W21H1 x64 DVD, and installed
Windows 10. Part of the reason I could do that, is W10
had been installed before and removed, so there was no
key to type in. If it had been "the first time", I
could in theory enter the W7 key used on the other
partition(s) (refurb COA). The two Windows 7 partitions there,
are using the same key. The first version of Windows
was tainted by the shop owner (doesn't pass a malware
scan), so it's now segregated and not used. The second
W7 and W10 are clean installs from media. The W7 was
installed using W7 Refurbisher, the disc of which I
asked for when purchasing the refurb machine. The shop
owner still had 30+ holographic DVDs available,
which were collected from machines where he did not
give the media to the customer.

The refurb DVD is practically identical to the retail DVD,
but I'm sure the ei.cfg is slightly different.

In any case, you're exactly right about the "safety first"
aspect of doing this. Never trust an install to go right.
Always have a backup (or a clone). One thing that happened
to me, is the HDD started to fail in the middle of my
"set of procedures", which complicated things slightly.
I used ddrescue, then later, a restore from backup when it
became clear that corrupt data had been written to disk,
and it wasn't just "a few CRC errors" as it first looked.
One of the Windows partitions got paved over, as part of
recovery. And the final result is a new drive in the
machine, with plenty of space at the end.

It wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be.
But at least I got to do my first ddrescue on
"real broken hardware". This shows the six
single-sector CRC errors, that prevented me from
doing stuff. The "200" items are the errored sectors.
The reason the scan time is short, is this is a
second pass where the missing sectors are retried.
The first pass is pretty slow.

# Mapfile. Created by GNU ddrescue version 1.22
# Command line: ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sde /dev/sdb /rescue.log
# Start time: 2021-06-19 09:14:56
# Current time: 2021-06-19 09:15:29
# Finished
# current_pos current_status current_pass
0x7BDF90800 + 3
# pos size status
0x00000000 0x933E4800 +
0x933E4800 0x00000200 -
0x933E4A00 0x559FD3C00 +
0x5ED3B8600 0x00000200 -
0x5ED3B8800 0x0BB7AE00 +
0x5F8F33600 0x00000200 -
0x5F8F33800 0x7CF1EE00 +
0x675E52600 0x00000200 -
0x675E52800 0x141939E00 +
0x7B778C600 0x00000200 -
0x7B778C800 0x06804000 +
0x7BDF90800 0x00000200 -
0x7BDF90A00 0x327AB9D600 +

Summary: You can see here, I haven't a care in the world.
No impact of upgrading, downgrading, multibooting.

Paul

Nil <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote:

> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
> the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
> for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
> don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
> is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
> my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
> happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
> upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
> real one?

I've been shilling for Macrium Reflect for years and you still haven't gotten
it???

Everybody should have primary and secondary storage devices. Use Macrium
Reflect to make a copy of everything Windows to your secondary storage. It's a
glaring menu selection on the startup screen.

Should be no trouble going back to Windows 7 that way. I never have any
trouble reverting to an older installation. Not once in jillions of times.

On 28 Jun 2021, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

> Before I installed that, I created the empty Win10 partition
> before hand, booted with the W21H1 x64 DVD, and installed
> Windows 10. Part of the reason I could do that, is W10
> had been installed before and removed, so there was no
> key to type in. If it had been "the first time", I
> could in theory enter the W7 key used on the other
> partition(s) (refurb COA). The two Windows 7 partitions there,
> are using the same key. The first version of Windows
> was tainted by the shop owner (doesn't pass a malware
> scan), so it's now segregated and not used. The second
> W7 and W10 are clean installs from media. The W7 was
> installed using W7 Refurbisher, the disc of which I
> asked for when purchasing the refurb machine. The shop
> owner still had 30+ holographic DVDs available,
> which were collected from machines where he did not
> give the media to the customer.

But your Windows 10 installation doesn't use the same product key as
your Windows 7, which is my main concern. I don't really know how this
works on Microsoft's end, but I'm worried that once the Win7 key is
used to validate a Win10 upgrade it will no longer be good for the old
Win7 installation and that old Win7 will appear to be unregistered if
it is booted up. This would make sense to me because I'm sure that MS
never intended you to buy a single license (for 7) and to later be able
to run two computers (7 and 10) from that one license.

I read that you can actually downgrade in place from 10 back to 7
within 30 (or 10?) days. This would be a last resort for me because I'd
be afraid that the process of upgrading would alter the original Win7
installation. Perhaps I could do the downgrade (which would inform MS
that I'm not using Windows 10 any longer,) then swap my clone of the
original Win7 disc back in.

So a related question comes to mind: For anyone that has upgraded from
Windows 7 or 8.1 to 10, then later uninstalled to upgrade to go back to
their previous OS... was your restored OS in perfect working order?

Nil wrote:
> On 28 Jun 2021, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote in
> alt.comp.os.windows-10:
>
>> Before I installed that, I created the empty Win10 partition
>> before hand, booted with the W21H1 x64 DVD, and installed
>> Windows 10. Part of the reason I could do that, is W10
>> had been installed before and removed, so there was no
>> key to type in. If it had been "the first time", I
>> could in theory enter the W7 key used on the other
>> partition(s) (refurb COA). The two Windows 7 partitions there,
>> are using the same key. The first version of Windows
>> was tainted by the shop owner (doesn't pass a malware
>> scan), so it's now segregated and not used. The second
>> W7 and W10 are clean installs from media. The W7 was
>> installed using W7 Refurbisher, the disc of which I
>> asked for when purchasing the refurb machine. The shop
>> owner still had 30+ holographic DVDs available,
>> which were collected from machines where he did not
>> give the media to the customer.
>
> But your Windows 10 installation doesn't use the same product key as
> your Windows 7, which is my main concern. I don't really know how this
> works on Microsoft's end, but I'm worried that once the Win7 key is
> used to validate a Win10 upgrade it will no longer be good for the old
> Win7 installation and that old Win7 will appear to be unregistered if
> it is booted up. This would make sense to me because I'm sure that MS
> never intended you to buy a single license (for 7) and to later be able
> to run two computers (7 and 10) from that one license.
>
> I read that you can actually downgrade in place from 10 back to 7
> within 30 (or 10?) days. This would be a last resort for me because I'd
> be afraid that the process of upgrading would alter the original Win7
> installation. Perhaps I could do the downgrade (which would inform MS
> that I'm not using Windows 10 any longer,) then swap my clone of the
> original Win7 disc back in.
>
> So a related question comes to mind: For anyone that has upgraded from
> Windows 7 or 8.1 to 10, then later uninstalled to upgrade to go back to
> their previous OS... was your restored OS in perfect working order?

If you do W10-over-W7, then click the "Revert" button in Windows 10,
to use Windows.old to bring back W7, that isn't perfect.

To start with, roll back can take an hour. It probably generates a log
while doing so. It's a "process", not exactly a "backup". It's not untarring
a tarball or something.

And Windows.old, despite the name, is not just "Windows" with .old slapped
on the end. It has materials from Program Files in it. It has a few other
odds and ends. Thus, it's a composite folder.

Your best bet, is to do a backup of Windows 7 and System Reserved, before
you start working with the Windows 10 DVD, then if you need to revert,
it could well take less time to restore from backup.

If you use the Revert function, it's generally pretty good, but you'll find
the odd setting is not what it used to be. And perhaps the Program
Files isn't perfect.

With that said, the Windows 10 installer is pretty amazing, as after several
releases, it gained the ability to survive a failure on the "last reboot".
If the OOBE didn't start on the last reboot, the automatic reversal can
take it back to Windows 7. Back in 10240, you could be left an orphan at
that point. At 10240, a failure on that last reboot, you were left to
your own devices to restore something to the machine. I had sometime
similar happen here, and when it does a Revert, it is dog slow if
you're in a rush to do something else. Then when your Windows 7 comes
back, you'll have to look it over and figure out, what, if anything,
has changed.

I've not tested "license amplification", by running Win7 on one machine,
and a Win10 using the same license key on a different machine. Any time
these materials are dual booted, they're on the same machine, so there is
no reason for activation to tip over.

Paul

Nil <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> writes:

> But your Windows 10 installation doesn't use the same product key as
> your Windows 7, which is my main concern. I don't really know how this
> works on Microsoft's end, but I'm worried that once the Win7 key is
> used to validate a Win10 upgrade it will no longer be good for the old
> Win7 installation and that old Win7 will appear to be unregistered if
> it is booted up. This would make sense to me because I'm sure that MS
> never intended you to buy a single license (for 7) and to later be able
> to run two computers (7 and 10) from that one license.
>

I don't know if it proves anything for you, but I got a PC with Windows
10 on it which had been upgraded from 7 by the previous owner. I
re-installed Windows 7 using the license on the disk and ran it like
that for a while. I then decided to upgrade to 10 again. The Windows 10
had a digital license associated with it, stored on microsoft servers I
think, and at some point during the proceedings I had to verify this
license by phoning a microsoft free phone number and typing various
numbers read to me by a robot.

I can't help you with the backup stuff, I never did one and I don't
think I had any data to worry about anyway.

"Nil" <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote in message
news:XnsAD57A96FA4888nilch1@wheedledeedle.moc...
> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
> the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
> for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
> don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
> is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
> my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
> happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
> upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
> real one?

I have done this several times on old laptops but only by reinstalling
Windows 7 afterwards not by allowing them to roll back. This got them their
free digital entitlement for Windows 10 so that they could update free in
the future.
Windows 7 Product Key required or a clone of the Windows 7 installation.

--
Regards
wasbit

On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:39:22 -0400, Nil
<rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote:

>I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
>the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
>for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
>don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
>is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
>my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
>happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
>upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
>real one?

I went from W7 to W10 and then went back. It was easy to do but I've
forgotten how.

Steve

--
http://www.npsnn.com

On 6/29/2021 11:05 AM, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:39:22 -0400, Nil
> <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
>> the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
>> for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
>> don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
>> is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
>> my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
>> happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
>> upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
>> real one?
>
> I went from W7 to W10 and then went back. It was easy to do but I've
> forgotten how.
>
> Steve
>

I made an image of Win 7 saved to NAS, then upgraded to Win 10 and saved
its image on the NAS and reverted back to 7

On 29 Jun 2021, Zaidy036 <Zaidy036@air.isp.spam> wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

> On 6/29/2021 11:05 AM, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
>> On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:39:22 -0400, Nil
>> <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10
>>> via the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current
>>> hard disk for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it
>>> doesn't go well or I don't like it (that is, if my important
>>> applications don't work well,) is it possible to downgrade back
>>> to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop my clone disk back in the
>>> computer and continue on as if nothing had happened. My worry is
>>> that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the upgrade and won't
>>> be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a real one?
>>
>> I went from W7 to W10 and then went back. It was easy to do but
>> I've forgotten how.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
> I made an image of Win 7 saved to NAS, then upgraded to Win 10 and
> saved its image on the NAS and reverted back to 7

That's almost exactly what I want to do. You were successful, so I
should be successful, too. Thanks!

Nil <rednoise9@removethiscomcast.net> wrote:
[...]

> So a related question comes to mind: For anyone that has upgraded from
> Windows 7 or 8.1 to 10, then later uninstalled to upgrade to go back to
> their previous OS... was your restored OS in perfect working order?

I upgraded two systems from Windows 8.1 to 10 and then rolled them
back (IIRC, 'revert' was the term) to 8.1 within the 30 days window.
Mind you, this was in the early days of Windows 10, in the initial 'get
it while you can' time-window.

I probably made image backup before the upgrade, because not doing so
would be rather careless. (I could check my notes, but would rather not
think too much about Windows 10! :-))

On 6/29/21 10:05 AM, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:39:22 -0400, Nil
> <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm thinking of upgrading my Windows 7 Pro machine to Windows 10 via
>> the 'free' upgrade. My idea is to make a clone of my current hard disk
>> for safekeeping, then perform the upgrade. If it doesn't go well or I
>> don't like it (that is, if my important applications don't work well,)
>> is it possible to downgrade back to Win7? Ideally I'd like to just pop
>> my clone disk back in the computer and continue on as if nothing had
>> happened. My worry is that the Product Key will be "tainted" by the
>> upgrade and won't be able to be used for Win7 any more. Is my concern a
>> real one?
>
> I went from W7 to W10 and then went back. It was easy to do but I've
> forgotten how.
>
> Steve

When I tried that, it didn't work. I forget why now, but the "restored"
Win7 was unusable.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I don't want to be your other half. I believe that One and One make
TWO." -- Alanis Morrisette: "Not the Doctor".

On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 at 22:03:11, Nil <rednoise9@REMOVETHIScomcast.net>
wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
[]
>So a related question comes to mind: For anyone that has upgraded from
>Windows 7 or 8.1 to 10, then later uninstalled to upgrade to go back to
>their previous OS... was your restored OS in perfect working order?

I "up"graded two machines to 10 and then back to 7 - my big old one,
which I reverted because it was as slow as - not molasses, more like tar
- on 10; not surprising, as I think it was Vista era hardware. I don't
_remember_ imaging, but I imagine I would have.
The other was this one; I reverted because W10 didn't have a driver for
the graphics (and couldn't find one), and the default driver was the
wrong aspect ratio, which I hate. There were other things, so I went
back. But for this one I definitely imaged it first, and just restored
from the image. The Windows 7 restored from the image shows no signs of
having been changed - it runs fairly fine: any quirks it has, it had
before. (The big old one came back fine too, though I haven't turned it
on for ages.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

* SLMR 2.1a #113 * Tits like watermelons, sparrows like bacon rind.
- 03-22-97 Dave Beecham <dave.beecham@pandbox.demon.co.uk> (quoted by
Gene Wirchenko, in alt.windows7.general, 2012-10-16.)