do not use the UpDownTool.

[benny // whalefall]

unless you know what you're getting into. (i didn't.)

this is a PC horror story. i'm share this here so the people who use this forum can learn from my mistakes, and because the Tool came from the same site, Tech Stuff / teknixstuff, that was linked to with Revert8Plus on the resources page on this website, the Frutiger Aero Archive. i do not blame Daniele. i blame only myself, this is a warning for everyone, including Daniele.

the UpDownTool claims to allow you to downgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 10 without losing anything, and it's all an automatic process.

this, as i've experienced it, is a complete lie.

as i started the process, i realized i couldn't click out of the option to delete everything. and i was foolish enough to take their word, at first, and so i didn't back up my files or C: drive. i hoped against all odds that maybe that's just how the tool worked, it acts like it's going to delete your stuff to fool your computer into downgrading but it keeps everything right where it was. that's not what happened. i lost everything. this might be completely predictable for someone who's more of a critical thinker than i was last night, but i've been having a shit time in life lately and so i was a bit denser than i normally am.

i'm very stupid, but also very lucky, because almost every program & game i had on my computer was connected to an online account, and while i've had this computer to game with for years, i only really started transitioning to using it as my main computer (instead of my Mac laptop) in the past few months, so i haven't actually lost that much work, because there's only about one text document's worth of writing, for example, that was saved to this computer (most of my writing is still on the other one, and so are all the photos important enough to share). what i'm most upset about is my mp3s, the ones i hadn't transferred to my player. those, and i'm a bit bummed about losing my Inkscape SVGs. well, and it's a pain in the ass to have to sign into & redownload everything again. i think i lost access to my Reddit account, because the password that's saved on Firefox is apparently incorrect. sigh. this is actually mostly salvageable, i just feel really stupid. and y'know, i am. i learned my lesson. i'm going to try to download everything to my hard drive instead of my PC's main drive if it's possible this time around. but i still feel stupid.

you can point and laugh, if you want.

just don't do what i did. i'd go as far as saying, don't use the UpDownTool. if you still want to, don't be like me, back up your files.

[lakes]

i don't think you're stupid for this!! it happens to the best of us. i remember trusting this one uxsecurethemer knock off that had a similar name and everything and it messed with my computer. just be careful what you download next time

[townpizza]

yikes. i personally never trust anything that upgrades/downgrades/modifies my pc in any significant way, otherwise i would have already tried something to make my windows 10 look like windows 7. good luck recovering your data

[benny // whalefall]

i don't think you're stupid for this!! it happens to the best of us. i remember trusting this one uxthemepatcher knock off that had a similar name and everything and it messed with my computer. just be careful what you download next time

thank you, and i will be careful. in fact, i may never download anything ever again. (that's just jokes, but jeeeeesus fucking christ. i'm a bit shellshocked lmfao)

[benny // whalefall]

yikes. i personally never trust anything that upgrades/downgrades/modifies my pc in any significant way, otherwise i would have already tried something to make my windows 10 look like windows 7. good luck recovering your data

the stupid thing is, it "worked." i mean, you should see my PC as it is now. it totally looks and acts like Windows 10. it's actually kind of cool, except for the simple fact that getting to this point destroyed my files. that's, uh, a problem. lmfao

[townpizza]

yikes. i personally never trust anything that upgrades/downgrades/modifies my pc in any significant way, otherwise i would have already tried something to make my windows 10 look like windows 7. good luck recovering your datathe stupid thing is, it "worked." i mean, you should see my PC as it is now. it totally looks and acts like Windows 10. it's actually kind of cool, except for the simple fact that getting to this point destroyed my files. that's, uh, a problem. lmfao

"What did it cost?"
"....Everything."

i suppose think of it as a new beginning for your computer 

[Daniele63]

The correct way to downgrade to a previous version is download an ISO file and flash it to a USB (Rufus is the best software on Windows), which you then choose as a boot drive in the BIOS (you need to press a certain F key when the computer boots up) and then run the installer.
It will format your drive (erase everything), so you need to do a external backup obviously.

I've done this multiple times before, even to try Linux, but instead of putting all my files in the C:/ drive I put them in a separate hard drive, so none of my files are affected if I corrupt my installation.

I tried Revert8Plus a few days back on Windows 11 and it literally gave me a black screen, with only a mouse cursor visible. Luckily I made a restore point, but I was unable to access the settings in Windows since I couldn't see anything. But I remembered that if you press Shift + Restart, it will boot directly into recovery mode.
There I was able to revert back to the restore point I made before installing Revert8Plus.

I'm hesitating to remove it from my site's resources because of that but other people didn't have the same problem so I'm not sure what happened. Also I think it's mostly a Windows 11 problem.

I've decided to not customize my PC anymore in order to make it as stable as possible, however if I'm feeling nostalgic or want to look at Aero again, I have virtual machines which I can boot up into Windows Vista and 7. But that's my personal preference.

[Vaking Voda]

i don't think you're stupid for this!! it happens to the best of us. i remember trusting this one uxsecurethemer knock off that had a similar name and everything and it messed with my computer. just be careful what you download next time

I FELL FOR THIS TOO

before I switched to Linux, I was modifying Windows with 3rd party tools like whatever the original one is (I can't remember the original program and the malware's names)

I realized it was malware BEFORE I restarted my pc! From the comments of the YouTube video I followed, it apparently modified some system files, that's all it did (hopefully). So I reverted Windows to a previous snapshot (a feature I didn't know about till I used it) and the install worked… I just don't know if the malware included other payloads or whatever but yeah.


MAKE SURE THE NAME OF THE PROGRAM IS THE SAME NAME IN TUTORIAL VIDEOS

for the website that provided the malware, it was all Web 3.0 looking (idk if there's a proper term for modern flat design yet), and even listed Minecraft skins. If the download is a .zip or some other kind of archive and is password protected, it may be malware, as password protected archives can't be scanned by antivirus tools. Well at least until they're unzipped, in which case if it wasn't a fork bomb, then you should scan. Fork bombs may break your system before you do anything idk, I don't have experience with them.

I didn't know that info till after I downloaded a password protected archive

[e]

i don't think you're stupid for this!! it happens to the best of us. i remember trusting this one uxsecurethemer knock off that had a similar name and everything and it messed with my computer. just be careful what you download next time

i even remember back then trying to make one of my laptops that had a 10 look like windows xp, then i saw a video of michael mjd doing a tutorial on it, but then one of the files i installed messed with the ssd and bluescreened it. i eventually gave it to a repair shop, and after they finished i installed linux mint on it

although i think installing linux on it might be a pretty nice step

[sk8erboi1oh1 (Radiation-s)]

honestly the only thing i think is safe is just skinning your linux into window 7. idk why i dont even know how to do it i use window 10 but i hope you get ypur data back tho