Question How to easily upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10

dancole

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Dec 31, 2014
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I'm a Windows 7 Professional user and am looking to upgrade to Windows 10, however I'm struggling to find an easy solution (likely due to the fact I missed the boat by about 2 years for a free upgrade)

The Windows 10 upgrade tool throws errors and there's no easy way within Windows to upgrade.

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Could someone please point me to or explain the easiest way for me to upgrade to 10 at this late stage please?

Many thanks in advance
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
With a valid Win 7 license key, that still works to activate a new Win 10 install.

The best way is a clean install of Win 10, and apply that Win 7 license.
Of course, this means you need to back up any data you do not wish to lose. Which you should have anyway, even with an inplace Upgrade.,

 

dancole

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Dec 31, 2014
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With a valid Win 7 license key, that still works to activate a new Win 10 install.

The best way is a clean install of Win 10, and apply that Win 7 license.
Of course, this means you need to back up any data you do not wish to lose. Which you should have anyway, even with an inplace Upgrade.,


Thanks for your quick reply however this is my issue, per your link step one is to download and run the tool:

The Windows 10 upgrade tool throws errors and there's no easy way within Windows to upgrade. See attached screen shot. I am unable to clean install W10 on a W7 build it seems? Has support on this upgrade path gone from Msoft?
 

Cj-tech

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Jan 27, 2021
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The problem with that is if you run the installer on a UEFI computer you'll get a GPT-formatted USB stick that won't boot in a Legacy BIOS machine (or vice-versa with a MBR stick that will boot but not install).

There's a workaround that lets you download the .iso if you don't have a Mac or Chromebook. You could then either use Rufus for Windows to make a bootable USB, or else if you have a DVD burner just burn a bootable DVD (note though that the .iso has got large enough lately to require a blank double-layer DVD). Or If you don't mind an upgrade install then just mounting the .iso would work.
 

ZV505867

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Apr 1, 2022
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Use something like Rufus to burn a downloaded ISO to a USB drive (both flash and hard drives of USB work). Then, plug it in and go into the computer you would like to upgrade. Windows will need to be running for this to properly function. Then, make sure that you still make a full backup (if you can, make an image backup) in the event that things go wrong). Open file explorer, and go into the SOURCES folder, then run setup.exe. See if you can upgrade.