Free Upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 - still waiting

Daveatthewell · 07 Aug 2016

My wife finally cracked and asked me to get her Laptop upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10 for free - it was July 27. Clicked on the white windows upgrade icon in the system tray and was advised that the upgrade had been reserved/confirmed. I'm not usually impatient and I guess that a number of people or organisations left it to the last minute. But just how long is it normal to wait for an indication that windows 10 is ready to install - and is it necessary to leave the laptop powered up while Microsoft thinks about it?!

dalchina · 07 Aug 2016

Hi, it should be too late now to get the free upgrade, as the year has passed. However, since you've reserved it, you could try contacting MS activation in your region and check.

You can at any time download the iso manually- and I would recommend doing so if
a. you have more than 1 PC to upgrade
b. the upgrade fails and you need to repeat it (the download may fail.. the upgrade may fail..
c. so you have the iso to use should you wish to clean install subsequently
d. in case you need to do an in-place upgrade repair install

Please see the Tutorial section for guides on downloading and in-place upgrade repair (you don't need the latter at this point of course)

NavyLCDR · 08 Aug 2016

This is what I would do. Download the Windows 10 ISO file:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums

Mount it:
How do I mount iso image file in Windows 7?

Run setup.exe from the mounted ISO file to start the upgrade. You never know, Microsoft still just might give you a Windows 10 activation.

To be safe, it is recommended to save a backup image of the hard deive first to an external storage device using a program like Macrium Reflect Free:
Macrium Reflect Free

Daveatthewell · 09 Aug 2016

Thanks dalchina and NavyLCDR all sorted thanks to the kind Microsoft person on the webchat - although I really didn't fancy having him/her remoting into my wife's laptop - but since I was about to go out, I was given the link to the "accessibility upgrade". That in itself posed another problem because I wanted to make a recovery disc for Win 7 in case everything when belly up and every time I tried the usual method I got an error. Googling that led me to do a system file check sfc /scannow the result of which were numerous corrupt system files - oh really! (surprised windows was working at all, then). Googling that led me to an is with KB3022345 which either corrupts or apparently gives the impression of corrupting system files. Uninstalling that update solved the problem allowing me to create a recovery disk. And do you know what I think that maybe that update was blocking my GetWinX download - or maybe it was a coincidence. Anyway - all hunkydory now. My only comment is that if this was a known issue with the KB3022345 why didn't microsoft either advise us or patch it?
Again, thanks guys.