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1068
August 30th, 2022 11:00
XPS 8950, changing OS from 11 to 10
I'm a power USER but not an IT expert. Received new XPS 8950 several days ago. It has OEM Windows 11 Home and I don't like it. I'm used to Windows 10 Pro. I've seen a number of apps and registry tweaks to, for instance, get back a usable Taskbar, etc. My preference would be to install Windows 10 Pro and move to a more mature Windows 11 when forced to.
There are lots of "guides" out there about how to reverse an upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, or from a Home to a Pro version, but little clarity about OEM installs. Any advice on how to proceed from my particular situation of Dell OEM Windows 11 Home?
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RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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August 30th, 2022 12:00
You should be able just to do a clean install using the Win 10 MS Media Creation Tool. But you'll likely have to buy a license upgrade from Microsoft to go from 11 Home to 10 Pro.
To be safe, image the boot drive first and store the image on a USB HDD. That way you can quickly revert if something goes wrong with the clean install or if you decide you want Win 11 back. Macrium Reflect (free) is a good imaging tool for this...
sandy1011
3 Posts
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August 30th, 2022 21:00
Thanks v much, Ron. Re: imaging boot drive , I'll do that. But, just so I know -- is that effectively the same as the "Repair Disk" that I burned to DVD yesterday? (As insurance, I'll be keeping the imaged drive and the repair disk anyway)).
RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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August 31st, 2022 12:00
Don't know how "Repair Disk" is defined.
Use Macrium to image every partition it sees on the boot drive, and it will be an exact copy of what's on the boot drive now.
If necessary, you can increase compression of the image Macrium creates, which can save space on your external USB HDD, over the "default" compression level. Higher compression = longer time to create the image, if that matters.
Select Macrium's option to "validate" the image as soon as it's created, before you launch the imaging.
Also be sure to use Macrium to create a bootable USB stick. You'll need that USB to boot the PC to restore an image of the boot drive that you create. The bootable USB stick is separate from the stored image, so set it safely aside too.
And remember, the image you create today is only up-to-date today. So good idea to get in habit of imaging both the boot and data drives, if you have two drives, on regular basis.
sandy1011
3 Posts
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September 1st, 2022 08:00
Understood. Thanks very much for your time and help.