Downgrade Omen an053NR from W10 to 8.1

[Mojestic]

Hello! I just bought my very first HP laptop and should be receiving it within a few days. I had Windows 8.1 Pro on my previous system and loved it however my motherboard got fried and now I bought the HP Omen an053NR. The only thing I'm not excited about is having Windows 10 Home as I've heard a lot of bad stories about updates causing issues.

Anyways, without going on a rant.. When I receive the laptop, can I downgrade it to 8.1 Pro and install all drivers and software without any issues? I know not to install the firmware and bios updates since they are designed for W10, but will everything else be fine? 

Thanks!!

[CF4]

Hi

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/product/omen-by-hp-17-an000-laptop-pc/15551440/model/17403707/drivers

There are no W8.x drivers, so you may have some difficulties.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Mojestic

Microsoft will only support platforms with the Kaby Lake chipsets and 7th gen core processors for W10.

They must have asked some of the hardware component manufacturers to only develop drivers for W10 as well.

For example, Intel only developed W10 drivers for the Intel HD graphics your notebook comes with.

Now there is a mod to get the Intel graphics to work on W7, but I don't know how you change the code for the mod to work on W8.1.

You can see this discussion below--Bruce BTS's post.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Video-Display-and-Touch/Windows-7-VGA-drivers-Probook-450-G4/...

Also, if your notebook comes with the Intel 3168 AC wifi adapter, that will not work on W7--even though there are drivers for it.

I don't know if it will work on W8.1 or not.

So, you would not be able to install any operating system other than W10 on your notebook and get everything to work without great difficulty, if at all.

[Mojestic]

Hello @Paul_Tikkanen and @Cf4,

Thank you both for such a quick response. Since I will be using Windows 10 home version which forces updates without the ability to defer, what happens when a large update such as Creators causes issues on the system (freezing, crashing, booting failures, BSOD, etc)? Is there a mechanism to revert the update in that case without having to do a fresh reinstall and lose all data?

Thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

While I haven't had any issues with all the W10 releases that have come out thus far, you have 30 days to go back to the previous build of W10 if something is not working with the latest build.

It is very simple to do and everything will be intact just as it was before you updated to the new release.

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mahesh/go-back-to-the-previous-build-on-windows-10/

[CF4]

A fresh install can create a folder called Windows old or you can copy data over, but I suspect the update process will be recurring nightmare.

[Mojestic]

Yes, that is my worry. I've been reading several articles on bugs being found within the new April update. I'm spending so much money on this Omen laptop that I don't want to have to deal with issues everytime there's an update.

This bug (link below) which gives recovery drives a letter causing Windows to think you don't have free space in your hard drive would be a nightmare.  

https://news.softpedia.com/news/windows-10-april-2018-update-mistakenly-assigns-drive-letters-to-rec...