Upgrade Path Question

Homer712 · 15 Dec 2020

Trying to understand my upgrade path. I'm currently on 1909 . . .

In May of 2021 that version will be at end of life. At that point, will I need to first upgrade to 2004 and then again to 20H2, or if I decide to take the plunge, can I go directly from 1909 to 20H2?

MS would sure make things a bit clearer if they held some consistency in the numbering scheme, at least for those of us who are not as deeply involved in this stuff as others.Of course, having recently acquired "elderly" status, not sure any system would be easy for me to understand.

Samuria · 15 Dec 2020

In theory you can go straight to the latest version but on the forums we see a lot of problems updating from old versions and many have had to do a clean install in order to get it working

Paul Black · 15 Dec 2020

Hello @Homer712,

You could go the Upgrade route, but if you follow the posts on TenForums, you will see that a lot of people have problems.

You do have some options though . . .

[1] Create a System Image to an external HDD BEFORE you do ANYTHING.
[2] Also Backup your important files and folders to an external HDD separately as well as the above.
[3] Go directly for the Upgrade route.
[4] Perform a Clean Install.

Now I know [4] is the most drastic method, BUT, the upside is that it will leave you with a nice clean, fast upto date OS. The downside is that you will have to re-install all your software and reset all you configurations.

Just a thought!

I hope this helps.

Berton · 15 Dec 2020

About 3 weeks ago I took a lady's 1803 to 1909 then was offered 2009 which installed without issues.

NavyLCDR · 15 Dec 2020

I would recommend you get the ISO file from Microsoft's Media Creation Tool. After you make a backup image of your drive, mount the ISO image file and click setup.exe to do your upgrade. It really is that simple.

Homer712 · 15 Dec 2020

Thanks to all those that responded. I have Macrium Reflect do a full image every Sunday, differential images every weekday. I also use two different backup programs for my data, so I'm covered there. I also have USB drives already made up of both 2004 and 20H2, so yes, it'll be a bit of a project, but I can try both the upgrade path as well as a clean install, and see which one works out best. Thanks again, and I'll mark this a solved.