Restoring a previous version of windows on a windows 7 pc using windows.old folder

At times you might want to restore a previous version of Windows, that you had installed before you installed Windows 7. This article explains just that.

Windows.old folder is created when you install a new version of windows over an older version. It basically consists of all the data in the root of your partition which had windows installed,  before you installed Windows 7. It might be quiet large in size. So make sure that your windows partition has enough free space to accommodate it.

1. You have to start the Windows RE. To do that, boot with your Windows 7 DVD. Press any key when asked to do so to boot into the DVD. After loading necessary files you will be taken to “install” window. Select language,time zone,currency etc and click next. Then in the next window, click “repair your computer”.

2. Now select the version of Windows 7 that you have installed and click next. Choose Command Prompt from System Recovery options.

3. Now you will have to move Windows 7 files to a new folder. So type the below commands in order and press enter after each one

C:

Md Win7

Move Windows Win7Windows

Move “Program Files” “Win7Program Files”

4. Then we will have to move the contents of Windows.Old folder. Type the below commands in order and press enter          after each one just as we did above.

move /y c:Windows.oldWindows c:

move /y “c:Windows.oldProgram Files” c:

move /y c:Windows.oldProgramData c:

move /y c:Windows.oldUsers c:

If you get the message “The system cannot find the file specified” when entering the commands in the above two sections, just go to the next step in the section.

5. The last step is to restore boot sector and the boot.ini (needed only if the previous version was XP).

To restore the boot sector :

If the previous version was Windows XP, type

X:bootbootsect /nt52 c:

If the previous version was Windows Vista, type

X:bootbootsect /nt60 c:

where X is your DVD drive.

To restore boot.ini (in case of XP) :

Type the following commands and press enter after each one.

Attrib –h –s –r boot.ini.saved

Copy boot.ini.saved boot.ini

Reboot your computer and now you will be able to boot into the previous version. You can remove the win7 folder in the C drive if you don’t need it. But note that Windows 7 is much better than XP or vista and it is always desirable to have the latest.