I need windows for work reasons. I have mint on my home machines. I just don’t want 11. Is there any tool out there to force a downgrade? or will I have to do a fresh install? Trying to avoid that since work software.
You can only “roll back” to 10 if you just upgraded from 10 to 11. If you bought something new then you can’t “roll back” to something that was never there.
Also if it’s a newer laptop expect a lot of things to be broken or work poorly. A lot of new hardware has come out post Windows 11.
How long has it been since the upgrade? You only get 10 days to do it easily so if it’s been less than 10 days just go to Settings / System / Recovery / Go back
If it’s been more than 10 days then you’d need to do a fresh re-install of Windows 10 on that system, meaning losing the currently installed apps and data. Make sure to back up before doing that.
EDIT: Maybe I misunderstood your question - if the laptop never had Windows 10 to begin with then there’s nothing to rollback to. You’d have to do a brand new installation of Windows 10 on that system which may or may not work if the system never had the proper Window 10 drivers & whatnot.
With windows, is always better to do a fresh install windows is super buggy and unofficially forcing a downgrade (if possible) will likely be a big headache in the long run.
I’m not sure about your company IT, but they may not allow you to use windows 10 if they are not paying for extended security updates.
Format a USB stick with a Linux distro.
Use that Linux’s partition system to delete the Windows partition entirely.
Yes you will have to do a fresh install.
I wouldn’t recommend it. Just install ExplorerPatcher to get the old UI back.
The amount of telemetry is essentially the same and most of it can be turned off in the settings.
is there a tool someone has built that explicitly strips all the telemetry and AI nonsense out? like revo but more agressive.
You can turn the telemetry and Recall off in the Windows settings. The privacy & security tab has everything.
Copilot can be uninstalled with Revo uninstaller like everything else.

