How do I boot an Windows10 iso image on a USB stick on a Windows7 desk top computer?

[Wayned214]

I'm trying to install Windows10 on an old Windows7 desktop, I've downloaded and created a USB stick with an ISO image on it. I have tried to boot it and actually succeeded a couple of times, but I got stuck after I realized I didn't have the MS registration number. Booting Windows and trying to install from the stick didn't work, now I'm trying to figure out how I was able to boot the USB stick. Holding F10 & F9 don't seem to work, neither does F1, F2, F3, etc. What am I missing?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

What I recommend you do is to just click on the blue Update Now button at the link below and upgrade directly from W7 to W10.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

You should still be able to get the free upgrade to W10, as indicated in this article.

Here's how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade | ZDNet

That way if W10 does not work to your expectations, you have 30 days to go back to W7 as long as you don't delete any of the installation files or windows.old folder.

How Can I Go Back to Windows 7/8 from Windows 10 (cocosenor.com)

[Wayned214]

This computer doesn't have a network connection, my wife bought a new computer (a year ago) and she's been using that and making sure she didn't need anything from the computer. Maybe I need to inconvenience my wife, etc. (shudder) and use her monitor, etc.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Do you have a USB wifi adapter you can connect to it and get to the internet that way?

When you pressed the F9 key at boot, you should have gotten the one-time boot options menu where you can select from the list of available bootable devices.

Why that didn't work, unfortunately that I do not know, because it should have.

[WAWood]

@Wayned214 

It's been a LONG TIME since I did this, so it might not work anymore -- but I ran into a similar problem and found out that you can MOUNT the ISO image and then use that to do an in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10.  Problem is, that while Win10 include the MOUNT function natively, from my experience, Win7 does not.  So, you have to do an online search for a utility that will allow you to MOUNT the ISO file in Windows 7.

When you have that, copy that to a USB stick and then install that on the Win7 PC. 

You would do better with this if you copy the Win10 ISO file from the USB stick to the Win7 PC hard drive.

Then, run the MOUNT utility -- it will assign a drive letter to the mounted ISO file.

Find that drive in Windows Explorer, right click on the setup.exe file and Run as administrator.  This will start an in-place upgrade.

[Wayned214]

I had one and gave it away while doing some cleaning stuff out<argggh>.

I will try the F9 key some more.

[Wayned214]

I'll try the F9 first, my wife has said that I can use her stuff tonight.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The problem with clean installing W10 is that if you don't have a product key, you are going to have to shell out big bucks for a W10 key/license and there is no guarantee that W10 is going to work 100% on your PC.

I would wait until you can hook up the PC to the internet and try to get the free upgrade.

[Wayned214]

F9 didn't work, neither did F7, F8, F11, F6, F4, etc.<sigh>

With F9 it did report the Built-In Tests of the various systems with R for Reboot at the bottom of the list which booted Windows

I tried to see how to change the length of time that the Setup screen flashed from 2 microseconds (it might have been a _little_ longer) to a minute or two but didn't see an option.

[Wayned214]

I realized that it (product key) was on a sticker on the side of the PC!<doh>