A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

I just upgraded my old Win7 machine to Win10 for free. Seems to be working swimmingly so far.

Has anyone here done the free upgrade? If so, how has it acted for you long term?

I did it a few years back with a Win 7 machine. It took hours but it worked fine.

I actually just did the same a few weeks ago on a Dell tower I had sitting around. It came licensed for Win7 and I could not find recovery disks, so I had to do a factory reset to Win 7. I ran the Win 10 update right after the reset and it’s been running great. My son is using it as a school PC and even a little gaming and he thinks it’s great. It’s a Core7 3200 processor I think with 4mb RAM, could probably use a bit more of that

I thought they ended the free upgrade a couple years ago. Is it back?

It used to be that the free upgrade was still open if you were using the accesibility features of the OS, on the honor system.
It only took to turn on "Magnification" or such to enable the upgrade authorization. Done that a couple of machines.
One thing: in the end you get a product code that retains a stigma of no being "original" or such, I think.
Male sure you have PLENTY of disk space. One of my upgrades died as it somehow did NOT compute space required before starting. Lost a lot of confidence in Windows since this event... pretty basic if you ask me!

nomadh wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:51 am I thought they ended the free upgrade a couple years ago. Is it back?

I did end a fews years ago but I found a few articles that stated that MS may have unofficially left it open and really didn't advertise it.

I had an old tower running WIN7 so I figured I might as well try it. If I bricked it, I would just buy a copy anyway.

If you have an authentic licensed version of WIN7, the Win10 seems to work flawlessly. It did take a long time to upgrade but all seems ok so far.

[mention]Spike[/mention] is correct. It is still unofficially available.

1st BACK UP EVERYTHING YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO LOSE.

(just in case) I use Macrium Reflect Free and make a full System ISO to an external hard drive I can use for recovery if necessary. You also need to make a Macrium Boot CD or USB if you plan to back up and restore with that program.

Usually the upgrades go well, but once in a while there can be a glitch.

Last time I checked this worked to upgrade computers with a valid install of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

Google "Download Windows 10 Disc Image" and follow the link. Chose the "Update now" option. Download it to your computer somewhere you can find it, like Desktop. When DL is through, click on what you saved to your desktop. This will add a new Icon, Windows Update Assistant. Click on the Update Assistant and follow directions. Be patient, depending on your hardware you may think the update is stuck at times. This is normal. Wait it out and usually all will go well. You can also check before starting to see if there are any know issues for your hardware. Older Nvidia graphics cards/drivers can be an issue at times. Link below covers some known issues.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004

I did it at the start of quarantine for my youngest's online learning. So far it has been working great. A nice little bonus.

nomadh wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:51 am I thought they ended the free upgrade a couple years ago. Is it back?

I don't think they ever turned it off, they just quit advertising it. For them it makes sense to keep it free now that Win7 isn't supported anymore. They make a lot more money via the online servcies ( Office 365, Xbox live, etc ) than they do off selling windows or office licenses like they used to.

In a sense the operating system is now the virutal shopping cart. Free to use if you fill it up and buy a bunch of our stuff.

I've done it to a few W7 systems. Seems fine so far.