How I upgraded my parents Win 7 to Win 10
So I wanted to upgrade my Parents laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10 as part of cleaning up their system so as to give the machine a new lease of life.
Issue
1) I was not sure if the upgrade offer was still available
since we are now in Jan 2021
2) I was afraid of losing my parents genuine Win7 OS license
if the upgrade failed, also I was unaware where to find my parents OS license
key
3) The upgrade website link for Microsoft was not working
for 3-4 days when I was trying to access it .
Prequel
Luckily I decided to give the Microsoft Win10 upgrade
link one last try and this time the link worked and I was able to download
& create a USB media with Win 10 boot / installation files.
Pre Requisite
1) Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or
SoC
2) RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
3) Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS or 20 GB for
64-bit OS
4) Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0
driver
Most importantly
Genuine Windows 7 License which is Activated
To check if your Windows 7 is activated , then Control
Panel, Go to System and Security , then System. This is the page where
you see lot of Information about your computer including RAM, Processor,
Windows Version you are using etc
At the bottom of this page you should be able to see Product
ID and Windows is activated information ( sometime it
takes a minute or so for the info to populate so if you see that section blank
, just wait for a bit ) Next to it you should also be able to see a
blue colored Genuine Microsoft logo
Note:
If your product is not activated activate it first before
you do anything else
Steps
Step 1
I used couple of methods to find the License Key for my
parents system , one of them was using this code in command promt as suggested
by JhakeSong ( wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get
OA3xOriginalProductKey ) without the brackets.
I also used NirSofts Product key finder (
https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/)
Offcourse you can also look under your Laptop or inside your
Laptop battery compartment for the License key sticker :-)
But surprisingly my parents Win 7 License key was different
to the sticker , maybe one of my brothers had upgraded the OS long time back.
so It was a good thing that I cross checked .
Step 2
Next step I verified the minimum system requirements related
to RAM , HDD size etc were met , At this stage I also checked to verify
that the OS on my parents laptop was "Activated "
Step 3
was all about backing up the files
a) I backed up files from My Documents, Desktop , Music,
Video, My Pictures , My Download folders in addition to known data files
lying in other drives like D & E
b) Backed up Bookmarks of Chrome, Firefox ,
Internet explorer just incase
c) You should also not forget to back up your .PST ,
.OST incase you have configured Outlook or other mail files in your
system ( my parents naturally didn't have those)
d) Don't forget to make a list of applications currently
installed and retrieve their data files and License Keys before you go to
next step
e) And don't forget to retrieve saved passwords from your
Chrome/ Firefox , and also Login Id / mail info from Skype
Step 4
Watched couple of videos on Youtube especially the below one
to get an idea of what to expect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGN4aXCuGuU
Step 5
Got a USB Pendrive with 8 gb capacility and formatted it
Step 6
Went to Windows Upgrade site and luckily this time the
site came up
Clicked on Download now tool ,
Downloaded the Media Creation tool , once
downloaded activated it by clicking on it.
Agreed the Terms & Conditions
Selected - Create Installation media
Basically followed the steps , once done the setup started
to get downloaded to the USB drive
Note : I thought it was better to download it to a USB than
run the upgrade directly , so as to avoid any issues incase the internet failed
during upgrade.
Step 7
Once the Win 10 upgrade files were downloaded to my USB
drive
I opened the drive and clicked on Setup
Step 8
From then onwards it was just following the instructions
given during the setup process
Step 9
Because my Windows 7 was genuine and it was Activated
, I never received any prompt for Product ID during the upgrade process.
If you do, you can enter the License key
of Windows 7
So that was it , now my parent's laptop has been
formatted and upgraded to Win 10
Note: During the installation process you will get an
option to fully format your C drive or to Keep your files , I
think its better to format ( remove all files) so as to ensure a clean
installation. Even though the installation only formats drive C ,
for safety I recommend you backing up all your files just in case other drives
also gets formatted.
All the best :-)
