Under situations related to performance and compatibility issues of applications or drivers, Windows users need to downgrade their operating system from later version to an earlier one. Downgrading to a lower version of operating system may cause several operational problems with your computer and result as file loss. In such cases, you need to opt for file recovery solutions to resolve the issue.

After you downgrade to the earlier version of Microsoft Windows operating system, several system components like sound, network, video adapter and more may not work correctly. This behavior may be encountered due to incompatible system drivers or incomplete installation of the operating system. The inaccessibility of sound card, network drives and other system components may occur due to one or more of the following:

  • Your system does not have appropriate drivers, which are compatible with your version of Windows viz. Windows Vista.
  • Changing the operating system might require you to install the original software image while troubleshooting possible software issues.
  • You are using certain system components which are compatible only with the later version of Windows.
  • The downgrade process is incomplete and thus your system does not have a valid and full fledged operating system to boot into.

This behavior of Microsoft Windows makes all your critical files inaccessible. You can not access your hard drive data after downgrading the operating system and thus critical files loss situations occur.

Resolution
There are three possible solutions of this problem:

  • Uninstall the already existing system drivers and install compatible drivers.
  • Restore original software image from the recent backup.
  • If the problem is due to incomplete downgrade process, format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.

Although, formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system can sort out most of the operating system and disk related errors but this process also has a downside. It removes all the data and system files from the selected hard drive partition. In such cases, File Recovery Software come into the picture for your rescue and to salvage all lost data.

These software are uniquely designed to scan the whole hard drive and extract all the missing, lost, deleted or inaccessible files from it. They are user-friendly applications and thus enable you to have ‘Do It Yourself’ File Recovery, without the need of sound and prior technical skills.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most advanced and comprehensive file recovery software to recover lost files. The software supports FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS file systems based Windows partitions and volumes. It is compatible with Windows 7 (currently in RC1), Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.