I'm seeing more and more stories like this one lately, from
PC World:
I usually start this column with “so and so needed something done to their PC,” but if I were to include the names of all the people who have written me about how unhappy they are with their Windows 10 “upgrade” the file would be so large the server that hosts this page would need a new hard drive. I’ve been inundated with unhappy Windows 10 users for the past two months, and my heart goes out to these folks. A lot of them were upgraded unsuspectingly, and Microsoft deserves a ton of scorn for its malware-like Windows 10 upgrade tactics. That said, now that you have Windows 10 on your PC and you’re not happy, here’s what you can do about it.
Their list of things you can do pretty short: 1) keep it but make changes, 2) nuke it and install a different OS, and 3) restore from factory OS partition (for PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.). #4 on their list is literally something you can't do:
4. Isn’t there an easier way to go back to my old OS?
Not anymore, there isn’t. There was a period during the “free upgrade” era when Microsoft allowed people to try Windows 10 for 31 days and go back if they were unhappy, but that window has closed. So for now you’re stuck with it.
Profoundly unhelpful. It took only two comments for one of their readers to chime in with some (potentially) more useful advice:
max999
"Microsoft deserves a ton of scorn for its malware-like Windows 10 upgrade tactics"
You left out:
5. Look into joining the huge lawsuit coming against Microsoft for these forced upgrades to Windows 10.
This isn't an outlier, of course. The headlines have been slowly but surely filling up with variations on this theme for a while now.