How To Make Windows 11 Like Window 10?

Simple - uninstall Windows 11, install Windows 10.

It should also be possible to dual-boot Windows 11/10, depending on the computer's resources (principally disc space), but it would probably take some organisational changes to get the best from such a setup and essential software would have to be installed on both OSs, but they could both be set up to use a shared User Partition for data. Check out Dual Boot Windows 11 with Windows 10 Tutorial

Sammy888 said:

You have 128GB of RAM?? Most of us have 16 and 32GB if not less.

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Yeah, I use a RAM Disk

hsehestedt said:

Ahhh yes, found what I was looking for. I was wrong, it was actually a setting that determines how many tabs from the browser are shown when pressing ALT + TAB.

But let me ask a question. Suppose you move the mouse pointer down to Chrome on the taskbar. A preview icon pops up above the taskbar. You can now move the pointer over that preview and get a full sized preview of that Window including all the tabs. You can select that windows or choose to slide over to another browser preview and see what tabs are on it. Does that not allow you to do what you are trying to accomplish?

I'm just trying to understand!

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I have i7-12700h processor so it is a 12th generation processor. So stick with windows 11 pro then right?


When you move the mouse pointer to the chrome on the taskbar, you would see a preview of all the chrome windows that are opened. So the more chrome windows you have opened, the smaller preview each one is... does that make sense? The issue is you need to go through which one it is each time. Not only that, what I find annoying is when you click on any of these chrome windows, when you click on whichever you want to click, you could easily misclick on whatever is on that page you are clicking at. Example you click on that chrome window you want and when doing that, you could accidentally click on a link on that page because that is where your mouse is set. Does that make sense? Compare that to with each chrome tab on the taskbar, you click the tab on the bottom of the taskbar and you would still need to drag the mouse up to click on something.


The thing is with the never combine windows option... you could even see the preview of the chrome window at the bottom of the taskbar assuming you don't have like a ton of chrome windows. Thus this is one thing that is ridiculous where it would be hard to use for windows 11. It is not only chrome, it is other programs where it could have multiple windows and it would appear just like that.

hdmi said:

In my view there's not much point going back to Windows 10 solely for the fact that Windows 11 has those kinds of annoyances. Install Open-Shell 4.4.170 first. In its settings window, I highly recommend choosing the Windows 7 style option for the Start Menu. You won't get tiles like you got on Windows 10, but then, tiles were designed with only touchscreen users in mind. Each time when I buy a new laptop, Open-Shell is among the first progams I install. I have actually been using it for 13 years, back then it was still called Classic Shell. For me, this has got absolutely nothing to do with making Windows look like older Windows. It's all about getting the steering wheel back after some Microsoft executive with ego problems had decided to steal it from us. There are no other reasons why I use programs like this. The same with ExplorerPatcher. I have been using it alongside Open-Shell for a year. Another typical example is called Battery Mode. It doesn't need an explanation, its mere existence alone speaks volumes of why I said what I said about steering wheels. Finally, there's also the TranslucentTB app from the Microsoft Store. It can help to mitigate the distraction that is commonly caused by having icons with vibrant bright colors shown on the taskbar against a type of background that only tends to amplify that effect, much to the point of falling victim to eyesore that could have been avoided, easily, and anyway to begin with.

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When I went from windows 7 to windows 10, I believe I used openshell or classic shell. But then I had issues though with something and stopped using it. Like a bug with the dm.exe or something like that error? It showed up each time I turned on my windows 10 pro laptop. I forgot exact name but it is where you could set it to high, medium, low etc.


So you recommend explorer patch then for my situation? The start menu doesn't bother me... it is the no option to never combine windows. That makes it very hard to use the windows 11.

I will say it again. I disagree with anyone who says to install Openshell. I've experienced all sorts of issues. OpenShell is not supported for Windows 11. There's all sorts of bugs reported on Github about it.

Moreover, Windows 11 "refresh" is being pushed and it will have StartMenu updates and more to improve it.

I installed Explorer Patcher and I had issues with it immediately after installing it. It took System Restore almost 5 minutes to restore everything back to where it was before installing it. You've been warned.

LeLibran said:

It should also be possible to dual-boot Windows 11/10, depending on the computer's resources (principally disc space), but it would probably take some organisational changes to get the best from such a setup and essential software would have to be installed on both OSs, but they could both be set up to use a shared User Partition for data. Check out Dual Boot Windows 11 with Windows 10 Tutorial

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Just my 1/2 cents. If you're going to dual-boot. Might as well boot to Linux—Ubuntu, Mint....

Windows 11 is great, it just needs a tiny bit of help, that's all!
Windows 11 & StartAllBack - they play very nicely together!

You can do what others have suggested, such as install Explorer Patcher or StartAllBack.
You also apply some tweaks here and there. Or, just do what I have done and stay with Windows 10.

For me, there are just too many retrograde issues to rush into Windows 11.
I have it on one computer, but the rest are staying on Windows 10.

Edwin said:

Windows 11 & StartAllBack - they play very nicely together!

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No they don't

Sammy888 said:

No they don't

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They do at my house!!!

StartAllBack and a handful of performance tweaks and this little VivoBook outperforms Windows 10, which it had when I first bought it!
No issues!

Why would anybody want to make windows 11 look like 10 when you can just stay on 10.

gmcgee78 said:

Why would anybody want to make windows 11 look like 10 when you can just stay on 10.

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Cuz we want the far superior performance of 11 but don't want to give up the form and functionality of 10!

If you prefer Win 10, make it your primary OS. Install Win 11 (assuming you have room) in a VHD and boot the VHD natively. This will let you play with Win 11 without committing to it. I love that method for a few reasons:

1) There is no virtualization, so this method worked great on systems with very little memory.

2) Since there is no virtualization, you have full access to the physical hardware.

3) It's a breeze to clean up. One single VHD file and a change in the boot accomplished through MSCONFIG.

I already mentioned from the beginning. I bought a new dell xps 15 9520 laptop. It came with windows 11 pro. I obviously prefer windows 10 pro but that wasn't an option. So I then just set up my computer as is and then see there is no never combine windows which is very annoying.


Someone tells me because I have a 12th generation processor.. i7-12700h, then i should stick with windows 11 pro right? The thing is i don't want to do a clean reinstall right now. But let say I do a clean reinstall and get windows 10 pro. What happens if all my drivers don't show up? I had this issue when I clean reinstall my old windows 10 dell xps 15 9550 and had to use another computer to download the wifi drivers because after clean reinstall windows 10 pro on old xps 9550, I had no wifi. Also right now I only have access to this one windows laptop that is my dell xps 15 9520. I use a chromebook as well but it has ton of issues. I have to use windows because programs i use... use windows.


So ... use startallback? I don't mind any 3rd party software as long as it is reputable and works and doesn't have issues. So avoid explorer patch? What about start11?

If I may make some suggestions, consider the following:

1) Consider initially testing Win 10 on your system to make sure it runs well. You can install Windows right alongside Windows 11. That way, if it doesn't work out you can simply delete it and you still have Win 11 on your system. When done testing, you can reinstall 10 on the HD wiping out Win 11 since you now know that Win 10 works fine.

Here is a procedure for doing this:

EDIT: Just noticed that I accidentally supplied an incorrect link. This is now corrected.


NOTE: The great thing about this method is that you can test all your drivers, apps, etc. and it's ridiculously easy to cleanup when you are done.

2) As an alternative, perform a complete image backup of your system, then do a clean install of Windows 10, knowing that you can go back to Win 11 if needed.

Regarding your question about getting drivers installed, this would be my suggestion:

You can easily export every driver on your system with a single command, then, after you install your clean copy of Windows, you can import them all back in again.

In your current running copy of Windows, open an elevated command prompt and then run this command:

pnputil /export-driver * D:\Drivers

This will export all drivers from your system to D:\Drivers. You can change that location to anything you like. Just create that folder before you run the command. If you look in that folder after the command completes (it can take a while) you should see that every driver gets a subdirectory under the location you specified.

Save that folder to a location that you can access later, for example, a thumb drive.

Install Windows 10.

After installation, make sure that the drivers you exported in the above steps is accessible on thumb drive, etc. Run the command below specifying that location in place of the D:\Drivers.

pnputil /add-driver D:\Drivers\*.inf /subdirs /install

This will import all of those drivers back to your new Windows installation. Please note that this can potentially take several minutes. Also, when the display driver is being loaded, the screen may temporarily flash or go blank.

One more note: As far as I know, Windows 11 drivers should typically work with Windows 10. The only exception that I am aware of is that there is a new driver model available for Ethernet adapters. If you have an Ethernet adapter and it doesn't work, then you may possibly need to obtain the Win 10 driver for your Ethernet adapter.

Sammy888 said:

Just my 1/2 cents. If you're going to dual-boot. Might as well boot to Linux—Ubuntu, Mint...

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How does using Linux have any relevance to this post?

newmann said:

When I went from windows 7 to windows 10, I believe I used openshell or classic shell. But then I had issues though with something and stopped using it. Like a bug with the dm.exe or something like that error? It showed up each time I turned on my windows 10 pro laptop. I forgot exact name but it is where you could set it to high, medium, low etc.


So you recommend explorer patch then for my situation? The start menu doesn't bother me... it is the no option to never combine windows. That makes it very hard to use the windows 11.

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Do you mean dwm.exe keeps regularly crashing? If so, try disabling transparency effects under personalization in Windows Settings. As for recommending to use ExplorerPatcher, like I already said, some funny guy who works at Mickeysoft had decided to come up with the wonderful idea of substituting the steering wheel with a slice of cabbage, and, if you don't like that idea, then you're a luddite. (And they are serious.)

Well kids..., I'm pretty much done beatin this dead horse!
You guys do what you gotta do, I'ma do what I gotta do!

Yes, if you have a 12th gen cpu, definitely leave it alone. 3 reasons.
1. 12th gen cpus were designed to be run on 11 or later
2. During a clean install, you would NOT see your ssd or any other drive until you inserted the Intel IRST f6 drivers into the install process. 12th gen cpus require it. From your many previous posts I sense you would not know how to do this.
3. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yeah @Edwin, me too. I'll meet you at the soap factory. You can buy me coffee.