Upgrade to Windows 10

[Gaylel]

Hi

I need to upgrade to Windows 10. Can someone please tell me if my desk top  also needs to ne upgraded or can i just purchase Windows 10 and install.

Do I need to back up to an external hardrive beforehand?

Thanks

GAyle

[WAWood]

@Gaylel 

The newer versions of Win10 have much less success on the older Win7 PCs than did the earlier versions of Win10.

And unfortunately, the routines that MS publishes only capture really major hardware problems and even then, are not accurate.

So, you should make an Image backup BEFORE attempting the upgrade, using the information below ...

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I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

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Also, you do NOT need to purchase Win10 as MS still allows folks to upgrade from Win7 or Win8x to Win10 for free.

1) Use this link to download and create Win10 install media: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

2) insert that into your PC (do NOT boot from it), find the folder containing the media, select the setup.exe file, right-click that and select Run as Administrator.  This will start an in-place Upgrade which could then take a couple of hours to complete.