Not liking the newly installed version of Windows 10? Has it messed up your PC settings? Are you feeling troubled with its all new interface and program settings? Don’t worry, Microsoft allows you to roll back to your previous Windows right away. That is – if you carried out an in-place upgrade of your Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 operating system. This tutorial will show you how to rollback Windows 10 to your previous version of Windows, provided you performed an in-place upgrade from Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 to Windows 10 – and provided you carry put the rollback operation , within 30 days of upgrading to Windows 10.
Rollback from Windows 10
Windows 10 has some great new features like Edge Browser, Windows Hello, Virtual Desktop, Device Guard, Antimalware Scan Interface, etc. but some people just can’t get past the habit and comfort of using their previous Windows versions. And then again, some may have messed up their upgrade and may want to get back to the stability of their previous Windows version, after using Windows 10 for a few days.
Thankfully Microsoft has kept an option of rollback, where unsatisfied users can uninstall the upgrade and rollback to the previous version of Windows – Windows 8.1 or Windows 7.
To roll back your Windows 10, go to your PC Settings, by typing Settings in the taskbar search bar, next to the Windows icon, and clicking on Settings. It will open the PC Settings. Select ‘Update and Security’.
The Update and Security option opens. Here you will see options like Windows Update, Activation, Backup, Recovery and Windows Defender. Click on ‘Recovery‘.
This will open the Recovery settings window for your PC. You will see 3 options:
- Reset this PC: Remove everything and reinstall Windows. This will take your PC to its original factory settings.
- Go back to your previous version of Windows: This will just bring your previous Windows back on your PC without affecting your documents and files. Note that you have to carry out the rollback operation, within 30 days of upgrading to Windows 10
- Advanced Startup: Here you can change your PC settings using a Windows image or a USB/DVD.
Click on ‘Go back to previous version of Windows’. In this case you see Go back to Windows 8.1.
Microsoft will then ask for your feedback and the reason to uninstall Windows 10.
Give your feedback and move ahead. Click on Next. You will see the following screen.
Make sure your PC is plugged in as the rollback might get interrupted due to power off. Click the Go back to Windows 8.1 button.
Your system might take a while to process the rollback and read the settings of your previous Windows version. Sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee. Note the important warning – you need to know or remember your password you used to sign in to your previous Windows version.
Once the rollback process is completed, your PC will automatically be booted into your previous version of Windows.
Rollback is dependent on the availability of the Windows.old & other folders folder, if you delete that, then you may not be offered the option to rollback.
On one of my other laptops, I upgraded my existing version of Windows 8.1 and ended up with a bit of a mess. So I decided to go in for a clean install of Windows 10 on a separate partition using a bootable USB.
Also see:
- How to remove or uninstall Windows 10
- How to downgrade Windows 10 to Windows 8.1/7 after a clean install.
Although Windows 10 users receive driver updates frequently to improve performance and stability, address bugs, and introduce new features, sometimes updates roll out with compatibility issues and unknown problems that can negatively affect your experience.
You may come across a driver issue after updating the graphics adapter to the latest NVIDIA release. Or after installing the newest driver for your network or sound adapter, or any other piece of hardware. Thankfully, you can use the “Roll Back Driver” feature to revert the changes and run your computer with a previous version of a device driver, using Device Manager.
In this Windows 10 guide, we walk you through the steps to quickly remove and restore a previous version of a driver on your device.
How to quickly reinstall an older driver on Windows 10
To roll back a device driver to a previous version on Windows 10, use these steps:
- Open Start.
- Search for Device Manager and click the top result to open the experience.
- Expand the category with the device that you want to roll back.
Right-click the device, and select the Properties option.
Click the Roll Back Driver button.
Select a reason why you’re rolling back (you can select any option).
Once you complete these steps, Windows 10 will uninstall the device, and the previous driver will be restored.
If the Roll Back Driver button isn’t available, Windows 10 doesn’t have any previous driver to roll back to. If this is the case, you’ll need to uninstall the device, download an older version of the driver from your manufacturer’s support website, and use their instructions to install the controller. (You can always use this guide to properly install a device driver on Windows 10.)
Although this guide is focused on Windows 10, the ability to roll back drivers has been around for a long time, which means that you can also use these steps on Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.
More Windows 10 resources
For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10, visit the following resources:
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Instant computer — just add a screen. That’s the general idea behind the ultra-portable PC, but it can be hard to know which one you want. Relax, we have you covered!
Today MS released an update for windows 10 (aug 5-6).
That update has messed up my touch interface, so that my touch screen is now more of a liability than an asset.
My question is how does one remove the updated drivers.
I already “uninstalled” the udate but it has left the new drivers intact , before giving up on windows 10 and going back to windows 8.1, I want to try to fix the situation.
so how can I roll back my machine a couple of days. if that is even possible in win10 I believe it may be the display driver that is causing the issue.
Replies (5)
Thank you for your interest in Windows 10.
To rollback the driver, you may follow the steps below:
- Press Windows + R on the desktop screen.
- Type devmgmt.msc and hit enter.
- Expand the category you want and right click on the driver and select properties.
- Navigate to driver tab and click on RollBack driver.
Hope this information was helpful.
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What if the driver doesn’t stay rolled back? Every few days, I have the rolled back driver for my Bluetooth adapter rolled forward by Windows Update. This is only since updating from 10240 (RTM) to build 10586. Any way to block this driver from being added by WU? See attached screen capture of the driver below. Curious to me that the BTHUSB.SYS file, which is stamped 10.0.10586 remains on the system after rollback. Guessing there may be security issues involved?
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Hi: I’m trying to roll back from an Nvidia display adapter driver which MS just automatically updated, but unfortunately the RollBack driver tab is blank–there’s nothing to roll back to. How do I install the MS display adapter driver which came with the windows 10 update–that was working fine.
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I ran into this issue with the latest updates; my system froze 3 times in about 2 hours. The 1 Aug NVIDIA drivers were to blame.
Where there is no “roll back” – I clicked “uninstall” and then waited for the magic to happen; when finished; I let windows search for compatible drivers (tapped F5), and it replaced the absent driver with the old driver; job almost done.
To prevent Microsoft from screwing up my machine again, I downloaded & installed the latest NVidia drivers and the machine is once again stable. (These should have a signature that is higher than the Windows Update ones, and thus shouldn’t be downgraded).
Windows 10 is generally good, but Microsoft’s arrogant assumption that all “updates” are “improvements” is a serious flaw.
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By Stella | Follow | Last Updated November 25, 2020
Summary :
Sometimes, updating a device driver can solve some hardware issues. But, this method doesn’t work all the time or it may cause some other issues. In this situation, you will need to roll back the device driver. Do you know how to roll back a driver? MiniTool will show you how to do this job in Device Manager.
About the Roll Back Driver Feature
Like Windows OS, the device driver on your computer is also updatable. But, an update is not a good thing all the time.
For example, after upgrading the device driver, you find an issue occurs or the new driver is incompatible with the current Windows OS. Or perhaps, the driver update doesn’t solve the issue you want to get rid of.
If something unexpected happens after updating a device driver, you may want to roll back the driver to its original version. Do you know how to roll back a driver on your computer? The feature, Roll Back Driver, will come in handy.
This feature is available in all Windows versions. You can find it in Device Manager. You can use it to uninstall the current version of a device driver and then automatically install its previous version.
In the following guide, we will show you how to use this feature to roll back a device driver.
In this post, we show you how to use MiniTool software to recover data from USB drive with error code 43 issue and 6 effective ways to solve this problem.
How to Roll Back a Driver in Windows?
It is very easy to roll back a device driver in Windows 10. You can follow these steps to do the job:
1. Right-click on the Windows button and select Device Manager from the popup menu.
2. Go to find the device that you want to roll back the driver for in Device Manager. Then, press the Arrow Down button or the Plus button to unfold the hardware categories.
3. Right-click on the target device driver and select Properties from the popup menu.
4. On the Properties window, switch to the Driver Then, you will find there are some available buttons including Roll Back Drivers. There is a description of this feature: If the device fails after updating the driver, roll back to the previously installed driver. Press the Roll Back Driver button to continue.
5. You will see the following popup window in which you can select why you need to roll back the device driver. Then, you can press the OK button to start the driver rollback process.
6. The previous version of the device driver will be restored. And then you will see Roll Back Driver greyed out. Now, you can close the Properties windows.
7. You will see the System Settings Change dialog box saying “Your hardware settings have changed. You must restart your computer for these changes to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?” You can click Yes to automatically reboot your computer.
After computer rebooting, Windows will automatically load the previous device driver version to your computer.
More Things You Should Know
The Roll Back Driver feature is not available for all devices like printer drivers. It is only for the hardware that is managed within the Device Manager.
Besides, you can only roll back a device driver once because it can only save the latest installed driver version rather than all the previous versions.
If you want to update your device driver, you can refer to this post to do the job: How to Update Device Drivers Windows 10 (2 Ways).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 4 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.
Reverse driver updates quickly
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The Roll Back Driver feature, available within Device Manager in all versions of Windows, is used to uninstall the current driver for a hardware device and then automatically install the previously installed driver.
The most common reason to use the driver roll back feature in Windows is to “reverse” a driver update that didn’t go so well. Maybe it didn’t fix the problem that the update was supposed to address, or maybe the update actually caused a problem.
How to Roll Back a Driver in Windows
Think of rolling back a driver as a quick and easy way to uninstall the latest driver, and then reinstall the previous one, all in one simple step.
The process as described below is the same no matter what driver you need to roll back, whether it be an NVIDIA video card driver, advanced mouse/keyboard driver, etc.
This usually takes less than 5 minutes, but it could take as long as 10 minutes or more depending on the driver and what hardware it’s for.
Open Device Manager. Doing so via Control Panel (which that link explains in detail if you need it) is probably easiest.
If you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 8, the Power User Menu, via the WIN+X key combination, gives you even faster access. See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you’re not sure what you’re running.
In Device Manager, locate the device that you want to roll back the driver for.
Navigate through the hardware categories by clicking the > or [+] icon, depending on your version of Windows. You can find the specific devices Windows recognizes under the major hardware categories you see in Device Manager.
After finding the hardware, tap-and-hold or right-click on the device’s name or icon and choose Properties. The device’s Properties window will open.
From the Driver tab, select the Roll Back Driver button.
If the Roll Back Driver button is disabled, Windows doesn’t have a previous driver to roll back to, so you won’t be able to complete this process. See the notes at the bottom of his page for more help.
Select the Yes button to the “Are you sure you would like to roll back to the previously installed driver software?” question. You might also be asked to select a reason for rolling back the driver.
In Windows XP, that message reads “Are you sure you would like to roll back to the previous driver?” but of course means exactly the same thing.
The previously installed driver will now be restored. You should see the Roll Back Driver button as disabled after the rollback is complete. Close the device properties screen.
Select Yes on the System Settings Change dialog box that says “Your hardware settings have changed. You must restart your computer for these changes to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?”
If this message is hidden, closing the Control Panel window might help. You won’t be able to close Device Manager.
Depending on the device driver you’re rolling back, it’s possible that you won’t need to restart your computer. If you don’t see the message, consider the rollback complete.
Your computer will now automatically restart.
When Windows starts again, it will load with the device driver for this hardware you had previously installed.
More About the Driver Roll Back Feature
Unfortunately, the Driver Roll Back feature is not available for printer drivers, as handy as that would be. It works only for hardware that’s managed within Device Manager.
Additionally, this only allows you to roll back a driver once. In other words, Windows only keeps a copy of the very last driver installed. It doesn’t store an archive of all the previously installed drivers for the device.
If there’s no driver to roll back to, but you know there’s a previous version available that you’d like to install, just “update” the driver with the older version. See How to Update Drivers in Windows if you need help doing that.
Last Updated: 2 years ago
If your computer keeps running into the AMD driver crashing issue, don’t worry. It’s usually easy to fix…
2 Fixes for AMD Drivers Crash
Just work your way down until the AMD driver crashing issue is resolved.
Fix 1: Update the faulty AMD driver (nearly always fixes the problem)
Perhaps the most common cause of the AMD driver crash error is an outdated or corrupt AMD driver. So you should update your AMD drivers to see if it fixes the problem. If you don’t have the time, patience or computer skills to update your drivers manually, you can, instead, do it automatically with Driver Easy.
Driver Easy will automatically recognize your system and find the correct drivers for it. You don’t need to know exactly what system your computer is running, you don’t need to risk downloading and installing the wrong driver, and you don’t need to worry about making a mistake when installing. Driver Easy handles it all.
You can update your drivers automatically with either the FREE or the Pro version of Driver Easy. But with the Pro version it takes just 2 clicks:
2) Run Driver Easy and click Scan Now. Driver Easy will then scan your computer and detect any problem drivers.
3) Click Update All to automatically download and install the correct version of all the drivers that are missing or out of date on your system (this requires the Pro version – you’ll be prompted to upgrade when you click Update All).
You can also click Update to do it for free if you like, but it’s partly manual.
4) Restart your computer and keep track of your computer to see if the problem is solved.
Fix 2: Roll back the faulty AMD driver
If you never have this AMD driver crashing issue until recently when you updated the most recent driver, chances are it’s this new driver that’s causing the problem. So we should try rolling it back to the previous version.
1) On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and R at the same time, then type devmgmt.msc into the box and press Enter.
2) Locate on the faulty AMD driver and double-click on it.
3) Click the Driver tab and then click Roll Back Driver.
4) Click Yes to confirm. Then the driver will be restored to a previous version.
5) Restart you computer and check if the problem is resolved.
How have the fixes above helped you with your troubleshooting? Do you have any experiences or ideas to share with us? Feel free to drop a comment below and let us know your thoughts. 🙂
Jan 25, 2018
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Windows, regardless which version you have, automatically installs generic drivers for your system. The drivers sometimes update when you install Windows Updates. Other times, you might manually update a driver, or a utility on your PC might do it for you. Driver updates are generally a good thing; they mean your hardware manufacturer is still actively adding support for the latest OS updates. Hardware that continues to get updates will be compatible longer. Unfortunately, driver updates don’t always play nice with the latest OS version, or with other hardware components. You might find a driver update has broken something instead of improving it. In such a case, you should roll back a driver to the previous version that worked. Here’s how to roll back a driver in Windows 10.
Driver updates are pretty easy to roll back however, you need administrative rights to do so. If you have several accounts configured on your Windows PC, it’s best to sign in with the admin account to roll back a driver instead of using a normal account and entering the admin password.
Roll Back A Driver
Open Device Manager. You can use Windows Search to look for it, or open the run box via the Win + R keyboard shortcut and enter the following;
In Device manager, look for the hardware component you want to roll back a driver for. There will be several different scenarios here so we’re going to go through each one. The first is when you have a roll back option available. Double-click the hardware component to open its Properties. Go to the Driver tab, and click the Roll back driver button, assuming it isn’t greyed out.
If the option is greyed out though, it means there is no driver version that Windows can roll back to. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to roll back a driver, just that you won’t be able to do it from the built-in option.
If you know which version of the driver you want to use, download it separately. You can find drivers, old and new versions, from your PC manufacturer’s website. Some drivers download as EXE files such as Dell driver. If that’s the case, you can run the EXE file and install a driver. Before you do that though, go to Device Manger and uninstall the Device.
Now, run the EXE file that your driver came as. It will automatically detect your hardware and everything should be good to go. If your driver didn’t come as an EXE file, you will need to go through Device Manager to install it.
Open Device Manager, and open the properties of the device you want to roll back a driver for. Go to the Driver tab and select Update Driver. Select Browse my computer for driver software>Browse. Select the folder you saved the driver file to, and Device Manager will be able to find it. It will handle everything else. You might need to restart your system for some changes to take affect.
This will work on Windows 7, 8/8.1, and Windows 10.
By Stella | Follow | Last Updated November 25, 2020
Summary :
Sometimes, updating a device driver can solve some hardware issues. But, this method doesn’t work all the time or it may cause some other issues. In this situation, you will need to roll back the device driver. Do you know how to roll back a driver? MiniTool will show you how to do this job in Device Manager.
About the Roll Back Driver Feature
Like Windows OS, the device driver on your computer is also updatable. But, an update is not a good thing all the time.
For example, after upgrading the device driver, you find an issue occurs or the new driver is incompatible with the current Windows OS. Or perhaps, the driver update doesn’t solve the issue you want to get rid of.
If something unexpected happens after updating a device driver, you may want to roll back the driver to its original version. Do you know how to roll back a driver on your computer? The feature, Roll Back Driver, will come in handy.
This feature is available in all Windows versions. You can find it in Device Manager. You can use it to uninstall the current version of a device driver and then automatically install its previous version.
In the following guide, we will show you how to use this feature to roll back a device driver.
In this post, we show you how to use MiniTool software to recover data from USB drive with error code 43 issue and 6 effective ways to solve this problem.
How to Roll Back a Driver in Windows?
It is very easy to roll back a device driver in Windows 10. You can follow these steps to do the job:
1. Right-click on the Windows button and select Device Manager from the popup menu.
2. Go to find the device that you want to roll back the driver for in Device Manager. Then, press the Arrow Down button or the Plus button to unfold the hardware categories.
3. Right-click on the target device driver and select Properties from the popup menu.
4. On the Properties window, switch to the Driver Then, you will find there are some available buttons including Roll Back Drivers. There is a description of this feature: If the device fails after updating the driver, roll back to the previously installed driver. Press the Roll Back Driver button to continue.
5. You will see the following popup window in which you can select why you need to roll back the device driver. Then, you can press the OK button to start the driver rollback process.
6. The previous version of the device driver will be restored. And then you will see Roll Back Driver greyed out. Now, you can close the Properties windows.
7. You will see the System Settings Change dialog box saying “Your hardware settings have changed. You must restart your computer for these changes to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?” You can click Yes to automatically reboot your computer.
After computer rebooting, Windows will automatically load the previous device driver version to your computer.
More Things You Should Know
The Roll Back Driver feature is not available for all devices like printer drivers. It is only for the hardware that is managed within the Device Manager.
Besides, you can only roll back a device driver once because it can only save the latest installed driver version rather than all the previous versions.
If you want to update your device driver, you can refer to this post to do the job: How to Update Device Drivers Windows 10 (2 Ways).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 4 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.
Microsft Windows OS gives you an opportunity to roll back the drivers to a previous build. But why will you do so in the first place? It might happen that the new version of a driver might be buggy, not having the desired features or even making your PC unstable. In those cases, the best bet is to roll back the drivers to an earlier version. The steps shown here are for Windows 10, but it should be near-about identical in all other versions as well. Moreover, also have a look at our guide to disable automatic driver updates on Windows 10.
Steps to Roll Back a Driver in Windows 10
Rolling back a driver in Windows involves uninstalling the new version and then reinstalling the earlier one. But you don’t have to do all this manually, the system will take care of this. On your end, executing a few of the below-mentioned steps is all it takes. No matter whether you’re rolling back an NVIDIA Graphics Card or an Audio Driver, steps are the same for all. Just make sure you’re using an account with administrative privileges. With that said, here are the steps to roll back drivers in Windows.
Steps to be Followed
- Head over to Device Manager on your PC. The easiest and quickest way of doing so is via the Win+X shortcut key combination. Once you press the mentioned shortcut keys, a menu will appear, select Device Manager from it.
- Now navigate to the device whose drivers you wish to roll back. Click on the arrow next to that device to expand the list.
- Right-click on that device and select Properties.
- Next, under the Drivers tab, look out for the Roll Back Driver option on your Windows PC. On the other hand, refer to these steps to backup and restore drivers on Windows 10.
- In the confirmation dialog box that appears, select the reason for the rollback (compulsory) and click Yes.
- Windows will now begin the process of rolling back the drivers to the previous build. The process might take some time, depending on the size of the driver.
- A System Settings Change dialog box will now appear, which says “Your hardware settings have changed. You must restart your computer for these changes to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?” Click on Yes to restart your PC. Once it does, your device will be up and running with the earlier version of the driver.
To learn how you can install unsigned drivers on your Windows PC, head over to our tutorial.
In some cases, the Roll Back Driver option in Windows might be greyed out. There could be many reasons for the same. If you are rolling back the driver for Printers, then Windows Device Manager doesn’t support that. Moreover, Windows only holds only the last previous build of any driver. If the option is greyed out, maybe Windows 10 doesn’t have any earlier builds of that driver.
So this was all about rolling back of drivers in Windows. If you still face any issues carrying out the above-mentioned steps, drop in your queries in the comments section below.