How To Uninstall Windows 7

As the time gets closer to Windows 7 Release Candidate expiration date, users have finally begun upgrading Windows 7 RC to RTM.

So, if you are planning to upgrade to Windows 7 final release, you can always refer how to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 guide. Although you can do a direct upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM, Microsoft doesn’t recommend it as a clean install will do a good job over upgrade.

For those of you planning to uninstall Windows 7, here is how to do it.

 

Scenario 1: You have installed Windows 7 on XP/Vista drive

If you have installed Windows 7 on the same disk drive on which you have Vista or XP, then you can easily downgrade to Windows Vista by following our step-by-step guides:

How to downgrade from Windows 7 to Vista

How to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP

Scenario 2: You did an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7.

Users who have chosen Upgrade option while installing Windows 7 from Vista come across this scenario. In this scenario, you can’t actually downgrade to Vista from Windows 7. You need to use the Windows Vista installation disc to install Vista all over again.

Scenario 3:  Windows 7 is the only OS on your machine

Here you have installed Windows 7 on an empty drive. In other words, you have formatted your Vista/XP drive and then installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 on it. Again, you have no choice but to install a fresh copy of Windows 7, Vista or XP to uninstall Windows 7.

Scenario 4: You have installed Windows 7 in dual boot with Vista/XP

To uninstall Windows 7 from dual boot system, you can follow the steps given below.

Uninstall Windows 7 in dual boot with Vista/XP:

# Boot in to your Vista/XP operating system and insert the Vista or Windows 7 installation DVD in the optical drive.

# Backup all your important data to an external drive. Go to Disk Management and formant your Windows 7 installed drive (partition). Think twice before formatting the drive as you will lose all your data in that particular (Windows 7 volume) drive.

# Open Command Prompt. If you are in Vista, please open the Command Prompt with admin rights. To do this, type CMD in Start menu search field and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys to open Command Prompt with admin rights. XP users can simply open the Command Prompt.

# As we mentioned in How to downgrade from Windows 7 to Vista guide, we are going to use a simple command to restore boot sector for the Vista installation. Now type the following command and then hit enter:

For Vista:

D:\Boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All (where D is your DVD drive)

For XP:

D:\Boot\Bootsect.exe /NT52 All  (where D is your DVD drive)

Done! Please note that this method works great only if Vista/XP was installed first.

Source: Microsoft KB