[Edited for typos]
I’ve just helped my daughter go back to Windows 7. She had been caught by Microsoft changing the Windows 10 Update to Recommended and her computer, without her explicit permission, had started upgrading. She had wisely let her computer install Windows 10 fully, but it then got into an endless “loop of death”, and she was stuck. Call in Dad.
If you’re here looking for ways to deal with the same problem then here’s what I did. I hope it helps. It took some figuring out, some help from internet searches, a couple of leaps of insight, and a bit of courage.
Within a minute or so of starting up in Windows 10 the computer would give a blue screen saying, “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart… System Thread Exception Not Handled.” It would then restart. I watched the loop a few times hoping that the computer would go into repair mode, but it didn’t. I guess it would still be looping now if I’d let it.
I’d already rolled back to Windows 7 on my own computer the simple way (in Windows 10: Start> Settings> Update and Security> Recovery> Go back to Windows 7). But unfortunately I couldn’t do this since the loop of death didn’t give me time.
Thanks to Robin (a million thanks) I realised that the problem was not that Windows 10 had failed to install properly, but that a driver was causing the problem. I’m not sure if what I did next is to be recommended, but here’s what I did (this sort of procedure takes me back to working with DOS).
I deliberately interrupted Windows 10 starting up by letting the start-up screen (four windows at an angle) run for a few seconds (about 5 seconds?) then powering down the computer by holding down the power key for a few seconds. Then I pressed the power key to start the computer again and repeated this procedure. I can’t remember if I had to do this two or three times, but in the end extra words appeared under the four windows saying, I think, “Please wait”. I waited and Windows 10 went into repair mode. Hurray.
From “Choose an option” I chose “Troubleshoot”.
From “Troubleshoot” I chose “Advanced options”.
From “Advanced options” I chose “Go back to previous build”.
It then said, “Going back to previous build. Restarting.”
It said that for a while before I realised that it wasn’t doing much, just sitting on that screen. Again it was the driver at work, stopping the computer restarting. Yet again I held down the power key to power off, then powered on again. Wonder of wonders it picked up nicely and continued to reinstall Windows 7.
That wasn’t quite the end because it was important to reduce the chance of getting caught again. On my computer I had done some tweaks with updates to Windows 7 to stop getting the “option” to upgrade, a route that has been well documented on the internet. I could see on the internet a new program called Never10, but I didn’t have the energy at this point to check it out (always!), so I just did it the way I had on my computer, which has worked fine so far.
Crossed fingers we’re sorted – until the next time. If I have made mistakes in writing this, please put me right. I don’t feel like installing Windows 10 again to check it properly. Go well!
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Chris
Sib 7.1.3, Laptop Intel 64bit, Windows 7, 16GB RAM |