Free Upgrade to Windows 10 Ends in a Little Over
a Week
7/20/2016
The free Windows 10
upgrade offer ends on July 29 and will
not be extended. After
then, Windows 10
Home will cost $119 and Windows 10 Pro will cost $199.
Microsoft pushed out an
update to GWX with a great big
countdown clock to prod Windows 7 and 8.x users into action.
 If you don’t want to
upgrade to Windows 10 (perhaps because
you have some software or a device that is not supported on Windows 10,
or
maybe you just don’t want to learn a new OS), Windows 7 will still be
in
extended support until January 14, 2020 and Windows 8.1 will be until
January
10, 2023.
If you're reasonably
certain you'll want to upgrade in the
next year, but you are not ready to upgrade by July 29th,
you should
claim your upgrade now, then roll back to your current operating system.
If you upgraded to
Windows 10 for free, then you can still
reinstall Windows 10 on that device for the lifetime of the device. Once Windows 7/8.1 is
upgraded to Windows 10
and it is activated, the device will have a Digital Entitlement for
Windows 10.
That
means Windows 10 can be clean
installed on that device in the future and remain activated.
A lot of my customers did
not want to upgrade, many because
they had business software (or QuickBooks prior to version 2015) that
will not
run on Windows 10. One
of my customers
is a franchisee and their franchisor’s software was not ready to run on
Windows
10. The franchisor
not only just
upgraded their software to run on Windows 10, but is requiring all
franchises
to upgrade to Windows 10. Another
who’s
business runs on QuickBooks decided to pay the large cost to upgrade
their
version of QuickBooks and wants to get the free upgrade to Windows 10. So I have been spending
long days upgrading a
lot of systems to Windows 10.
For those who are ready
to make the upgrade before the free
offer expires, here's how to do it with the least hassle.
1. Creating an Image-based Backup
Creating an image-based
backup is optional but highly
recommended. Everyone
should have a full
backup anyway, and this is as good an excuse as any to make that happen. You can use Windows 7
Backup, which has the
ability to create an image backup, or any other backup software that
creates a
complete image. (Getting
Windows 7
backup in a Home edition of Windows is tricky.)
2. Have Another Administrator
Account
The Windows 10 installer
will disable the Administrator
account (if it is not already disabled).
Make sure that you have another account that
is a member of the
Administrators group and you can log on with that account before
starting the
upgrade.
3. Check for an updated system
BIOS
This step is not
optional; many failed upgrades have been
traced to an out-of-date BIOS. If
you
have software from your computer manufacturer (such as Lenovo
ThinkVantage
System Update) that can check for and install a BIOS date, use it to
check for
and install any available BIOS update.
If not, check the BIOS date (run Msinfo32.exe
and check the reported
BIOS Version/Date—not SMBIOS Version—or boot the system and go into the
BIOS
setup utility), then compare that version with website for the PC maker
(or,
for homebrew machines, the motherboard maker) and see if there's an
updated
BIOS. Pay special
attention if your BIOS
is older than July, 2015 and the latest version is newer.
4. Make sure that your system has
all critical and important
updates installed
The Windows 10 upgrade
will check for and install Windows
updates on your existing OS before installing Windows 10. I had a couple systems
that had not been
turned on for a few months and had not recently installed Windows
updates hang
checking for Windows updates. (Windows
Update, especially on Windows 7, is well known for sometimes taking
many hours
to check for updates, but the Windows 10 upgrade was stuck checking for
updates
and never reported any progress for hours.)
I had to cancel the Windows 10 upgrade,
manually run Windows Update and
install all the important updates, then start the Windows 10 upgrade
(including
downloading again).
5. Create Windows 10 installer
USB flash drive media
This step is optional,
you can download and run the
installer directly, but if you have to start the upgrade over (and I
had to on
a few already) you will have to download the installer again and it
takes
hours. You will
need a USB flash drive
that is at least 4 GB and can be completely erased.
6. Run Setup from the installer
USB drive
Don't boot from that USB
drive. You need to
upgrade from within Windows to
qualify for the free upgrade. From
the
USB flash drive you created earlier, run Setup.
7. Continue with installation and
activation
Accept the license
agreement. The
install will check for updates for your
existing OS. After
installing any
updates, Windows 10 will install and will reboot a few times.
It will eventually ask
you to log on. On
your first log on, you will have an
opportunity to personalize Windows 10 and disable things like a lot of
the data
that gets sent back to Microsoft and disable some of the new apps.
Professional Services
If you need assistance with upgrading, IT
Professional
Services can help. Please contact
us.
Find
out more about our Managed
Care service.
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