Recover Win 10 system from windows.old?

[Haole Boy]

Aloha!

A customer brought in his machine saying that he mucked it up and lost all his data and wanted to see if I could get it back. After talking to him for a while, I figured out that he had a functioning Win 10 Home system, but a buddy at MS sent him a copy of Win 10 Pro, and he decided to install it. Something went wrong (I don't know what...) and he tried a couple of times to do the install. He ended up in a situation where the machine boots, but none of his programs are installed and he cannot find his data.

Looking at the machine, it's still Win 10 Home. Ran an sfc /scannow and no integrity violations were found, so I think the OS is in good shape (i.e. no need to reinstall Win 10 Home).

There is a Windows.old file on the C: drive with the date and time that matches when he tried to do the Pro install. I've done some googling and found several websites that show how to restore a Win 7 machine from Windows.old, but nothing that mentions you can do this for Windows 10. Is this possible? If so, any hints or tips on doing this?

I can use Fab's to get his data from Windows.old, but if I can do a full restore of his system so that he has all his programs and his data, that would make my day (and his, too)!

Mahalo in advance!

Harry Z.

 

[Haole Boy]

Here's a link to one of the articles that talks about how to do this for Win 7:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971760

 

[CTL]

Sounds like a re-install was done vs. just entering the key to upgrade Win10 home to pro. I had a similar case last week and tried everything to restore OS using windows.old in win10..no luck. Luckily, the user files were able to be recovered. Once I tried to restore the windows.old folder, it went down hill quickly and computer would no longer boot. Restored the image I took and let the customer know.

Just curious if maybe this will work for you as it didn't for me: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rollback-windows-10-after-30-days

Also did you look at the "Recovery" Menu to see if any rollback options are available?

 

[nlinecomputers]

You can only roll this back to Win 7. If the Win 10 Pro upgrade had worked there wouldn't be a Windows.old directory or it would be overridden with the first Win 10 install. Each new install of Windows puts the old version in the Windows.old directory. If he did two in a row then he is FUBAR.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Before you do anything I would take a complete image of the machine. Even a rollback to 7 is not certain. Half the time when I've tried this it hasn't worked. Usually, because the upgrade was performed on a virus infected machine.

 

[Haole Boy]

Mahalo for all the replies.

Sounds like a re-install was done vs. just entering the key to upgrade Win10 home to pro.

I did not know you could do this. I'll give it a try. BTW.. talked with the customer a little more. The Wind 10 Pro install USB stick is supposed to be run at boot. The customer ran it when Windows was up and running.

Just curious if maybe this will work for you as it didn't for me: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rollback-windows-10-after-30-days

Windows 10 Home was on the machine when it came from Dell, so none of the folders with the previous version of the operating system exist in this scenario.

Also did you look at the "Recovery" Menu to see if any rollback options are available?

Yes, I looked there. No rollback options. If the upgrade to Pro had worked, would there be a Rollback option?

Before you do anything I would take a complete image of the machine.

Yes, I create an image of every machine that hits my bench before doing anything.

At this point, I think I'll just restore his data from Windows.old and try entering the Win 10 Pro license key to see what happens.

Again, Mahalo for your replies!

Harry Z.