(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); i recently upgraded my gpas computer to win7 from vista and it got all messed up because of a bad registery file. i told him i could fix it but he is set on downgrading back to vista. so i looked up how to do it and they say u need windows.old i have looked and tried everything but cant find it. i did find a folder called $WINDOWS.~Q and it has (to what i think) the same contents as the windows.old folder. am i correct on them being the same? can i use this to downgrade? plz help

never mind. all is fine as i was able to fix the computer and he is happy with that. thanks for your help tho

When you upgrade your pc to Windows 7 from vista, you will get a folder called windows.old that will contain everything that was on your hard drive before you upgraded, that is, if you chose custom install. If you chose to just wipe everything and upgrade, you won't have that folder. Your computer will be brand new, but everything will be gone. You cannot "use" windows.old to downgrade, as it is just everything that is on your main drive (yes, everything). What is in your "$WINDOWS.~Q" folder?

To downgrade, I would recommend backing up all of your stuff onto an external hard drive, or onto the "Cloud", and doing a clean downgrade, and wiping everything.

Sorry if this is a bit confusing to read. I was never good with paragraph structure

What I would do is grab all the stuff I need and re-install Windows.