Obviously, You Can Recover an Upgraded Surface Laptop to Windows 10 S

Obviously, You Can Recover an Upgraded Surface Laptop to Windows 10 S

Despite some concerns to the contrary, those who upgrade a Surface Laptop to Windows 10 Pro will indeed be able to return to Windows 10 S, as I knew to be the case. All you need is the downloadable recovery image.

Which is now available from the Surface website. But even without this image, if you make a recovery drive before upgrading to Windows 10 Pro, that will of course work as well.

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Concerns about losing Windows 10 S after the Windows 10 Pro upgrade arose after a Microsoft FAQ described this upgrade as “one-way.” But this comment was misunderstood. What Microsoft really meant was that there was no way to do an in-place “downgrade” from Pro to S. Obviously, you can always recover to the original OS.

And now you have yet another way to do so. No worries, folks. This was always going to work.

And yes, this will work for any Windows 10 S-based PC.

 

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Conversation 9 comments

  • Bart

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2017 - 8:22 am

    <p>Are there any limitations for any pc to be "downgraded" to Windows 10 S?</p>

    • SRLRacing

      19 June, 2017 - 9:22 am

      <blockquote><a href="#126670"><em>In reply to Bart:</em></a></blockquote><p>Probably having the proper product key would be your biggest hurdle. I don't think say a Pro key entitles you t install home. </p>

  • MikeGalos

    19 June, 2017 - 9:13 am

    <p>And, of course you can't do an in-place downgrade because that would leave you with the applications you upgraded to Windows 10 to install left unusable and likely not able to be removed since their uninstaller is likely a non-store Win32 app.</p><p>Of course, the real question is why you'd want to downgrade if you actually had a need to upgrade in the first place.</p>

    • ayebang

      19 June, 2017 - 10:59 am

      <blockquote><a href="#126679"><em>In reply to MikeGalos:</em></a></blockquote><p>There are many reason for downgrade.</p><p>1) In next year, probably, there are many apps in app store and want to come back for simplicity reason.</p><p>2) Pro 10 may be too much for him, want longer battery life.</p><p>3) may be he may not use 10 S enough and ruch to use win 10 and want 10 S for longer battery life and its simplicity.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      19 June, 2017 - 3:41 pm

      <p><a href="#126679"><em>In reply to MikeGalos:</em></a></p><p>I figure it'd be a semidestructive system restore. The registry would be flushed of anything not factory-installed, and every update which was needed out-of-box at first login would be needed again. OTOH, user files would be left as-is. What I'd want to know is whether anything added under C:\ProgramData or C:\Users\Public would be left unchanged or removed.</p>

  • dnation70

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2017 - 1:35 pm

    <p>BUT,,when are they going to do it for ppl that want to run it on a desktop??</p>

  • lantern20

    Premium Member
    21 June, 2017 - 9:10 am

    <p>Can you re-upgrade to Pro if you go back to S (after the upgrade offer expires at the end of the year)?</p>

  • bbold

    20 February, 2018 - 10:39 pm

    <p>The recovery image page seems to have been taken down now. So is this still relevant?</p><p><br></p><p>..oh wait. The page shows up in Internet Explorer but not in Edge. Weird.</p>

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