Upgrading w/personal files only?

Hi, I wanna upgrade my Windows 7 PC directly using the Media Creation Tool, keeping the personal files only. Is it possible to specify which folders to keep?

At minimum, I would like to remove the 'AppData' folder to remove old cache and program files, but I'm still not sure if this is a good idea. The only folder I want to keep intact is my very large 'Dropbox' folder.

I considered choosing the "Nothing" option, except I don't want to re-download my entire Dropbox and put unnecessary stress on this 7yr old hard drive.

CountMike said:

I'm afraid it's all or nothing but maybe you can back that folder up and than just return it in proper place.

I think it's even worse than that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that if you want the Windows 10 upgrade to activate, you have to do a full upgrade, keeping everything.

My suggestion is to image the drive, remove everything that you don't want to be in the Win10 installation, and then run the upgrade.

If you're running a 7 year old spinner, your PC may be living on borrowed time. Have you considered replacing it? The expense would be modest, and the drive manufacturers usually make drive cloning software available for free. It may be more awkward in a laptop, I admit.

bobkn said:

I think it's even worse than that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that if you want the Windows 10 upgrade to activate, you have to do a full upgrade, keeping everything.

My suggestion is to image the drive, remove everything that you don't want to be in the Win10 installation, and then run the upgrade.

If you're running a 7 year old spinner, your PC may be living on borrowed time. Have you considered replacing it? The expense would be modest, and the drive manufacturers usually make drive cloning software available for free. It may be more awkward in a laptop, I admit.

You are hereby corrected. It is an upgrade and you are offered the option to keep your apps, files, and settings, or just your files, or nothing. Only if you do a clean install later do you not have the choice of what to keep. But the first installation is always an upgrade (except for retail copies of Windows 10) so you always get the choice.

Cbarnhorst said:

You are hereby corrected. It is an upgrade and you are offered the option to keep your apps, files, and settings, or just your files, or nothing. Only if you do a clean install later do you not have the choice of what to keep. But the first installation is always an upgrade (except for retail copies of Windows 10) so you always get the choice.

I was aware of the choice.

The first time I ran the upgrade, I chose to keep nothing. (It was an upgrade: I mounted the ISO and ran it from within Windows 8.1)

It went OK, but the result didn't activate.

Comments?

bobkn said:

I was aware of the choice.

The first time I ran the upgrade, I chose to keep nothing. (It was an upgrade: I mounted the ISO and ran it from within Windows 8.1)

It went OK, but the result didn't activate.

Comments?

Only that the "What do you want to keep" option wouldn't affect activation. You can use phone activation by typing "slui 4" in a command prompt. Tha't more direct than using the Contact Support app on the Start Menu.