How to upgrade please

BOAC said:

Thank you for all your suggestions. I have lots of SSD's laying around so I'm going to make some bootable copies of the entire 1GB C: drive, replace the original with it and work on the copy (for safety)
May take a few weeks to do this, I'll come back with the results.

I didn't ask but I assume upgrading W10 all the programs will still run ? in other words programs are back compatible within an operating system regarless of version ?

Thank you again

If they work on Windows 10, they'll work on Windows 11.

BOAC said:

Hi, please be gentle,, ! I'm an 78 yr old enthusiast with some but limited knowledge.
I have two W10 Pc's that are working fine, but have never been connected to the internet since new
Both are windows 10 Profesional (two seperate licences)
One is Windows 10 Professional (x64) Version 1803 (build 17134.829)
Other is Windows 10 Professional (x64) version v1709-18299.611
I now want to use them on the internet and would like to know the best way to update them
Someone mentioned downloading an ISO no idea how to do that.
I do have acess to this page at M$ and could download each update seperately ?
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft...q=windows%2010

Which is the safest way ? I must not affect the programs already installed

Thank you

If you are now going to connect them to the internet then they will be updated via Windows Update which is the simplest solution for you.

dalchina said:

Before making ANY change, take precautions. A full backup (e.g. to removable external disk) is ALWAYS an excellent idea.
I don't just mean of your own files, but the whole system- so you can recover even if the disk fails, the PC blows up and you need a new one or you have some other unrecoverable problem.

If you haven't yet started to use 3rd party disk imaging (that creates a compressed copy of the used part of the selected partitions in a file written to e.g. a large enough external disk) - then doing so BEFORE attempting the upgrade would be an excellent idea.

Probably the simplest program for you would be AOMEI Backupper (free version).
You'd also need a large enough external disk - say twice the size of the data you're backing up to allow for ongoing use and expansion.


Whilst updating SHOULD be relatively straightforward, there is likely to be at least one recent update that won't succeed (it fails for many). This one, should it occur, can be ignored ('hidden') - i.e. there is a way for you to 'hide' it.

That's a challenge for people having limited computer knowledge.

That's why people like you contribute here, isn't it?

Anyway, thank you for your comment. Point is, if something goes badly wrong... how would he recover?

Tears, recriminations, despair... seen that.

The point has to be made.

Take precautions - be aware.

A slightly different take on it, I was given a Win8.1 Notebook a three weeks ago, has a Celeron CPU with 8GB RAM, works fine but I may pass it on to someone so I Upgraded it to Win10. I always keep on hand and in my toolkit the bootable USB 8GB Thumb drive made using the MCT/Microsoft Media Creation Tool to create it. With Windows running I run the setup.exe file on the Thumb drive to Upgrade to a fairly recent version. My latest is from December so there's not a lot of updates to do after the install and no files/data was lost. Also, since Win8.1 was activated it remained so with Win10.