Once you upgrade to Windows 11, you only have 10 days to revert to Windows 10

Once you upgrade to Windows 11, you solely undergo 10 years to revert to Windows 10

A young man looking very surprised at his laptop

(Image acknowledgment: Shutterstock / Roman Samborskyi)

Windows 11 alone offers you a 10-day timeframe to change your idea about the upgrade and revert to Windows 10.

This isn't a new revelation, of course, but with more folks in real time afoot to Windows 11 – given that Microsoft opened the upgrade floodgates a fortnight ago – we figured it was valuable a reminder that you're on a pretty tight deadline for making a decision nearly whether you want to follow Windows 11.

The situation differs notably and substantially from Windows 10, whereby those upgrading from Windows 7 or 8.1 got 30 days goodwill to dabble with the operative system, and withdraw to the old interpretation if they decided IT wasn't for them.

Put differently, Microsoft has reduced the push back adorn stop from 30 days with Windows 10, to just 10 days with Windows 11.

Subsequently that time has expired, when you head over to the 'Recovery' options riddle (look for information technology under Settings), the option to 'Go Back' – meaning to revert to the previous OS, Windows 10 – is greyed out. The only way to come back to Windows 10 at that point is to fully reinstall the OS on the PC, which is obviously quite a task compared to just clicking a button.

Analytic thinking: Grabbing a platter image is worthy for this

The self-explanatory problem here is that by narrowing down the reversion period, people who upgrade to Windows 11 and don't hit any immediate hitches, but after discover a dirty issue after a few weeks, none longer have the pick to make a atomic number 102-fuss transposition back to Windows 10. They'Ra stuck.

And this is particularly galling seeing as the opportunity to turn back remained open for a full calendar month when common people were upgrading to Windows 10.

So, if you'Re nervous about migrating to Windows 11 and that insufficient trial sentence frame, as it were, then ace thing you can do is hold a backup image of your Windows 10 installation in front you ascent.

This can be achieved exploitation software like Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect (or another of the best disk cloning tools around), and with an image in place, if at any time you want to regress to that snapshot of your old OS, you can doh so.

The key is to equal prepared as this is something that must equal done leading of upgrading to Windows 11, plainly enough. In our book, it's a worthwhile precaution surely, particularly now Microsoft has whittled down the rollback period to an absolute minimum for reasons best known to the software large.

Observe out where to buy Windows 10

Via ZDNet

Darren is a freelancer written material news and features for TechRadar (and at times T3) across a clear rank of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, diverse past computer hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has scrivened some tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his free time (his debut refreshing - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).