To get your free upgrade, head to Microsoft’s Download Windows 10 website.
RELATED: What's the Best Way to Back Up My Computer? How to Upgrade to Windows 10 for Free
If your PC doesn’t have a sticker, you can always use a tool like NirSoft’s ProduKey to find the license key currently in use on your PC. If you installed Windows 7 or Windows 8 yourself, you’ll want to find the license key you purchased. This key may be printed on a sticker on your PC’s case or on your laptop. We also encourage you to find your Windows 7 (or Windows 8) key, just in case you need it. The upgrade process shouldn’t erase your files unless you choose to erase them, but it’s always a good idea to have a current backup-especially when you’re performing a major operating system upgrade. RELATED: You Can Still Get Windows 10 for Free With a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 Key Back Up Before Upgradingīefore you get started, we recommend you back up your files. We wouldn’t worry about it for home PCs, but organizations should likely contact their Microsoft licensing partner for more details. If you have Windows 7 PCs in your business, Microsoft may not consider you compliant with the terms of its licensing agreement after using this method to upgrade your business PCs. Update: Note that we can’t speak to the business licensing side of things here. And, after you do upgrade, your PC gets a valid Windows 10 key that will keep working-even if Microsoft stops allowing new upgrades in the future. Microsoft may one day pull the plug and cut off new upgrades. There’s no guarantee this will work forever, but it still worked on January 14, 2020. You just have to provide a valid Windows 7 (or Windows 8) key.
You can also upgrade a PC by doing a fresh install of Windows 10, even if it doesn’t have any operating system installed. Your PC will get a genuine, activated Windows 10 key-just like it worked during Windows 10’s first year when the free upgrade offer was officially being advertised. Is there any way to make this work? I was aware that the fully online way to do an upgrade was no longer possible, but I thought if I purchased a legitimate upgrade key from a retailer, then this might work, as Microsoft still provided the box into which you can enter an upgrade key.Assuming you’re using a Windows PC with a genuine and activated Windows 7 (or Windows 8) key, you can upgrade to Windows 10 in just a few clicks. When I rebooted my computer, the option to enter an upgrade code under 'anytime upgrade' had suddenly disappeared and the only thing that came up in the search box from the Start menu was the title 'anytime upgrade no longer available.' However, this turned out to be a diversion, as my version of Home Premium already had SP1 pre-installed, so in fact there is nothing that can be done to un-install or re-install it. It also threw up an error code (which I read online) is usually associated with Service pack 1 not being properly installed.
This looked promising, because the supplier went out of their way to emphasise this was a legitimate boxed version (origin Ireland) and was brand new.Īt first, windows appeared to accept the upgrade ke y, but then came up with the message 'Installation not successful'. I have been trying to upgrade my Sony Vaio Windows 7 laptop from Home Premium to Ultimate using a license-only upgrade key purchased off Amazon Uk. Hello, hope this is a good place to post this.