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Reverting 10X boot restrictions & returning to classic 10

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure Secure Boot is turned off on the machine you wish to roll back to classic 10

Tweak USB contents

  • Plug in the setup USB drive
  • Navigate to efi\boot inside your USB drive
  • Rename the existing bootx64.efi file to winx64.efi
  • Copy the EFI shell file you've downloaded to that directory and rename it to bootx64.efi
  • Create a file on the root of your USB drive called startup.nsh and open it in Notepad
  • Paste this text into Notepad and save the file:
    dmpstore -d SecureBootPlatformID -guid 77FA9ABD-0359-4D32-BD60-28F4E78F784B
    fs0:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs1:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs2:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs3:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs4:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs5:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs6:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs7:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs8:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fs9:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    fsA:\efi\boot\winx64.efi
    
  • Copy gdisk64.exe to the root of your USB drive
  • The USB drive is now ready to use

Extra troubleshooting

Recent devices with Intel Pentium (Gold) chips that use Insyde BIOS are prone to entering a faulty Secure Boot state, resulting in the machine booting to a black screen with Security Boot Fail written in the middle, even though UEFI says Secure Boot is off. To fix this issue, do the following:

  • Turn Secure Boot on
  • Save changes and boot to UEFI settings again
  • Turn Secure Boot off
  • Secure Boot should now be fully disabled

Erasing the Windows 10X disk layout

  • Boot your Windows Setup USB
  • Press Shift-F10 to open the Command Prompt
    • If nothing happens, you may need to also press the Fn key if your keyboard has one
  • Find the drive letter of your USB drive (for example D:)
    • An easy way to do this is to run Notepad and use the File>Open menu item, then go to This PC and look for it
  • Navigate to it using this command (don't forget to use the appropriate letter for your own USB)
D:
  • Run spaceutil to find the ID of your physical drive
spaceutil get-drive -poolname ospool
  • In spaceutil's output look for the #### column, the value can for example be 0
  • Double check that the ID is correct by running gdisk64
    • Don't forget to change X in the command to the ID of your drive
gdisk64 -l \\.\physicaldriveX
  • Make sure that the output of gdisk64 contains OSPool and other partitions of Windows 10X
  • Use gdisk64 to clean up the drive using the following commands
    • Don't forget to change X in the command to the ID of your drive
gdisk64 \\.\physicaldriveX
o
w

then press Enter

  • Type exit to close the Command Prompt

You can now continue installing Windows 10 like you usually would