Fresh/Clean W11 - Downgrade to W10
I just bough a new Lenovo laptop and it came with Windows 11.
Being me, I wanted to use it and try it out. Got all my files and programms installed etc.
Now it's starting to have major performance issues and plenty of bugs and I want to get back to W10.
On my other laptop, the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool only provides a Clean Install option and formats the drive.
Does it provide a Keep files option for newer W11 versions?
Is there a way to downgrade to W10 without losing my installed files and programs? (The Go Back option is unavailable to me due to a fresh W11 install)
Edit: I saw somewhere that when performing a clean install, all the files are put in a Windows.OLD folder.
How reliable is this? Of course, programs wont be kept, but user files? I don't want to risk it.
Now it's starting to have major performance issues and plenty of bugs and I want to get back to W10.
By default you have 10 days, unless the amount of time is increased, to rollback a feature update and/or upgrade to Windows 11. Of course a laptop that came with Windows 11 CANNOT be rolled back to Windows 10. You would have to install Windows 10 and replace Windows 11.
On my other laptop, the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool only provides a Clean Install option and formats the drive. Does it provide a Keep files option for newer W11 versions?
The option to keep your files still exists but it must be a supported case. You can only keep your files in the event you are staying on the same build or the build number is increasing. In the case you describe, you currently have Windows 11 installed which has a higher build, than the current supported version of Windows 10. This means you cannot keep your files if you are downgrading your machine from Windows 11 to Windows 10. In other words it's not possible to keep your files, if you currently have Windows 11 installed, and want to use Windows 10 instead.
Is there a way to downgrade to W10 without losing my installed files and programs?
No
I saw somewhere that when performing a clean install, all the files are put in a Windows.OLD folder.
Windows.old will only exist in the case of an upgrade. A machine that came with Windows 11 would not have this folder.
How reliable is this? Of course, programs wont be kept, but user files? I don't want to risk it.
It's reliable in supported cases. The scenario you describe is unsupported, Windows.old will not be created, since the only option is to "keep nothing" when downgrading from Windows 11 to Windows 10.