By now, almost all Windows 7 and 8.1 users should have seen the little app popping up in the notification area on your desktop advising you that a free upgrade to Windows 10 is available.
But should you take the leap and do the upgrade?
Our advice would be as follows:
- You have until July 2016 to do the upgrade for free, so there is no need to panic.
- Quite a few users who have done the upgrade have run into difficulties either with their previously installed applications (even Microsoft ones) or with Windows itself.
- It is probably a good idea to wait a few months to allow time for the inevitable bugs to be ironed out.
If you are really impatient and want to try the upgrade then here are a few tips:
- Make sure you backup all your documents and important files to some sort of external storage, e.g. USB external hard drive, NAS, or cloud storage.
- You can revert to the previous version of windows providing you do this within 30 days of the upgrade (example instructions here).
- If you revert back, then you can upgrade again at a later date.
What if you have Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and you can’t see a Windows 10 upgrade option?
If this is the case then you may have Windows updates turned off. Go to Windows Updates and keep updating. Eventually the little upgrade icon should appear in your notification area. Sometimes even when the icon does appear you may need to keep going to the Windows update utility and manually updating until the upgrade app will properly download and install Windows 10.
Also you can go to this page and download the Windows troubleshooter which will examine your Windows configuration and tell you which updates you need.
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