Difference between non-downgrade and downgrade recovery media

[bontistic]

Recently bought an X1 Yoga and it came with Windows 10 Pro. My wife's older X1 Carbon came with Windows 7 Pro with upgrade rights to Windows 8.

From what I understand, my X1Y is a non-downgrade system and my wife's X1C is a downgrade system.

But the description on the Lenovo site is confusing to me and I was wondering what are the differences between these 2 versions of recovery media since both sites allow my X1 Yoga download access for both even if mine came with Windows 10 Pro already. Are both clean install preloads with no preinstalled OS required (I mean if I have a blank SSD to install to)? Or are they the same and it should not matter which one I download?

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/lenovorecoveryndg
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/lenovorecovery

Here are the direct quotes from those websites, emphasis on the NOT SHIPPED part in the first statement:

What is a non-downgrade THINK system? All Lenovo THINK products which were not shipped with Windows either Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 10 are considered to be non-downgrade THINK systems. Any THINK product which was pre-installed with Windows 7 Pro operation system with upgrade rights to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 license will be categorized as downgrade systems

If your computer was preinstalled with the Windows® 7 Professional operating system through the downgrade rights of the Windows® 8.1 Pro or Windows 10 Pro license, you are entitled to upgrade to the licensed OS (Windows® 10 Pro or Windows® 8.1 Pro).\

Thanks!

[theterminator93]

Okay, here's my understanding.

If you buy a computer today, it will likely come with a Windows 10 license. A provision of that license (Professional or enterprise versions only) is the right to downgrade to an earlier supported OS, like Windows 8.1 or 7. You can use any one of those operating systems.

If you use Windows 7 on a computer with a Windows 10 license, you are exercising your downgrade rights.

If you use Windows 10 on a computer with a Windows 10 license, you aren't using any downgrade rights because you are using the OS as licensed. You can still downgrade to 7 or 8.1 - but then you'll be exercising the downgrade option.

In short - if the computer ships with a license for a newer Windows than what was installed - you are using a downgraded license. You have the right to "upgrade" to whatever license the newer OS is for. It's just a term to describe that you're running a legally entitled OS that is older than what you are also entitled to run, based on the license. It's just fancy speak for what what you're doing with your Windows license.

I don't know for certain but there shouldn't really be any difference between downgrade media and non downgrade media - assuming both are for the same OS. The only caveat is that you won't get Windows 10 to activate on a computer licensed for 8.1, because a Windows license won't give you free upgrade rights beyond that version which its license is for (e.g. Windows 8.1 is either 8.1 or 7 via downgrade rights, but not 10; 10 is 8.1/7 via downgrade rights).

[bontistic]

Thank you, we have the same understanding. I also think the 2 types of recovery media should be the same, but since a system is only allowed to download once, I wanted to be sure that both types will allow me to reinstall Windows 10 and install drivers on a blank SSD or without an existing OS.

Oh, I can still make my own recovery USB drive but I want to use that as my final option.

One more thing, if I get a second X1 Yoga but with different specs like a lower processor, RAM and display, can I use the same USB drive made using the first X1 Yoga?

Thanks again!

[theterminator93]

In the ThinkPad world I live in (**20 series and older) there are two flavors of recovery, this is probably still true today but I've got limited experience with it:

One is simply a hard disk image of the machine in question, which is really only intended to be used on the same machine (or one of an identical flavor). Think of it as a Ghost image of the computer when you got it from the factory. You could try to restore it onto a different machine, but there's no guarantees it will have all the drivers, or even boot to Windows at all. This is what you get when you use the "create recovery media" program that you'll find on the hard drive.

The other is the factory OS and software restore recovery set, which builds the software image that would be used in case #1 above. The OS recovery portion is machine agnostic - you can use it on pretty much any ThinkPad. The drivers and applications portions are a little more specific; usually there are a few to a few dozen machine types that one set of disks can be used on (e.g. one set for T420/T420s/T520, another set for X220, another set for W520 etc.). It really just means it's guaranteed to have all the drivers and software for those models.

[jdrou]

If I'm understanding the situation correctly then the X1 Carbon is licensed for Windows 8 with Windows 7 pre-installed through downgrade rights (or it was purchased shortly before Win 8 was released when system vendors often give a free upgrade to the upcoming version). To get a Windows 10 license you would need to do an upgrade from Win7 or Win8. You can't do a clean install until you've done the upgrade to register your computer with Microsoft as being licensed. From what I've read it may be still possible to upgrade for free even though the "official" free window expired in July. Otherwise you'd need to buy Windows 10.
https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-win ... -features/

[bontistic]

@jdrou, @ttheterminator93

Thank you for your inputs, I downloaded the non-downgrade version of the recovery media as it seems more applicable to my situation and I assumed the "not shipped" statement was a typographical error.

I hope this will allow me to restore the factory OS in a clean drive.

[bontistic]

Ok, I now have an answer to my original post.

Bottomline, Downgrade and Non-Downgrade media are 100% identical. Both are full installs with drivers and in my case Lenovo Companion and Lenovo Settings included.

For both cases below, the recovery part number is 01HU496.
Case A: Downloaded the recovery media from the Lenovo Non-Downgrade site for the first X1Y and ran the USB Recovery Creator and used a 16GB flash drive.
Case B: Ordered the recovery USB from the Lenovo Downgrade site for the second X1Y and waited a few days for the OEM flash drive to arrive.

Copied the contents of both USB drives to separate folders on my desktop and ran a WinMerge compare on them, the results are all files and binaries identical.

I hope this helps anyone who encountered the same confusion as I had a few weeks back.