After a Windows 11 upgrade, you have 10 days to roll back to the previous Windows 10 installation. If that deadline seems uncomfortably short, you can use a built-in Windows tool to extend it to as much as 60 days.
When you upgrade a PC to Windows 11, you have the option to hit a big Go Back button (Settings > System > Recovery) and restore your previous Windows 10 installation. But you only have 10 days to exercise that option; the clock starts ticking as soon as you finish the Windows 11 install, and when you reach the 10-day milestone, those rollback files are permanently deleted. My colleague David Gewirtz discovered this setting last week, and hoo boy I am here to tell you he did not like it one bit. The 10-day limit is « bonkers, » he wrote, adding that it is « ridiculous and arbitrary [and] seems completely random. » And then he speculates as to the reason. « Why? Just because. » Somewhere in Redmond, I am certain, the product managers in charge of Windows 11 upgrades are reading that and pounding their heads on a desk in frustration. Is that default setting new? Nope. That’s been the rollback rule for every Windows 10 feature update for more than five years. Is it arbitrary? Of course it is. There’s no right or wrong number of days, and you could probably make a case for extending the deadline to 14 days, or 21 days, or even 30 days (which is what the rollback period was for Windows 10 from its initial release in 2015 until the arrival of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update in July 2016).
