Welcome to this guide where I'm going to show
you how to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without losing your data for free. And if you get any value from this video,
please give it a like and subscribe to the channel. But to get into the guide, before you can
upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10, there are a few prerequisites that you need to check first. One quick disclaimer I just want to give before
we start with this guide is that Microsoft recently announced that you won't be able to
upgrade for free to Windows 10 from Windows 7 or 8 anymore. And this post was made in September of 2023,
but I'm recording this guide in October of 2023 and it's still working, but it
might stop working in the future. So if this guide works for you, please drop
a comment down below saying if it works for you or not. And also just mention the date
that you performed the upgrade on. The first one being your copy
of Windows 7 must be activated. If it's not activated and you try and run
the Windows 10 setup file, you'll be prompted to enter a valid product key because
your Windows 7 isn't activated. So step number one is to make sure
that your Windows 7 is activated. And you can check if your Windows 7 is activated
by clicking on the start button, then right clicking on computer and
then clicking on properties. And then here scroll all the way down until
you get to the Windows activation section and here you'll see whether
Windows is activated or not. The second thing you need to check is if you
have service pack 1 installed and you can do that on the same system page by scrolling
up and here in the Windows edition, it should say Windows 7 and then the version and
below it, it should say service pack 1. On this copy of Windows 7, I don't
have service pack 1 installed yet. So I'm going to go ahead and do
that and show you how to do it. To download and install service pack 1 for
Windows 7, you need to visit this web page and I'll have this web page linked along with
any other web pages and resources that I use in my written guide on my website, which will
be one of the links in this video's description. So you can go ahead and get all of the resources
that I use in this video in my written guide. But once you're on this web page, before you
choose one of these options, go back to the system page and here where it says system
type, you need to check if you have 64 bit or 32 bit version of Windows installed. And then when you come back to the service
pack 1 web page, if you have a 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed like I do, you'll need
to select this option which says x64 and if you have a 32 bit version of Windows installed,
you'll need to choose the normal Windows 7 service pack 1 option. We won't be using the third option as
that's for Windows Server and not Windows 7. So I'm going to go ahead and download the
Windows 7 service pack 1 for 64 bit systems and to do that, just click
on this download button. And when this next window opens up, you can
just choose the.exe file and then click on that and that'll start downloading the
Windows 7 service pack 1.exe installer file. And we'll just need to wait for this to complete
and then we can run it and install service pack 1. Once the download is finished,
don't just click on it to run it. Open the file in your downloads folder and
then once you have the file in your downloads folder, right click on it and then
click on run as administrator. And then next you'll see this screen that
says install Windows 7 service pack 1 and you can click on next. And then make sure to save all your work and
close any programs as your computer will restart automatically and you need to make sure that
this checkbox is ticked and then you can go ahead and click on install. And then the Windows 7 service pack 1 installation
will start and we'll need to wait for this to finish before you can continue with the guide. Once your computer has finished restarting,
you'll see that Windows 7 service pack 1 is now installed and you can go ahead and
click on close to close this window. Now in step number three, you'll need to download
and install the default secure protocols, Microsoft EasyFix and you can get it by going
to this webpage, which again I'll have linked in my written guide. Once you've downloaded the EasyFix, just
go ahead and click on it to open the file. If you do get any prompts, just click on OK. Click on run. Then just click on I agree. Then click on next and wait
for it to install this EasyFix. And once it's finished, you'll see that it
says all done and you can go ahead and click on close. Next, you need to download and install the
TLS 1.1 and 1.2 Windows update and you can get the update by going to this webpage. And then once you're here, you want
to look for the Windows 7 versions. And again, you'll need to select either the
64 bit or 32 bit version, depending on what you have installed on your system. I'll go ahead and download the 64 bit version
by clicking on the download button here. And then I'll just click on
this file to start the download. Then I'll just close this and go to my downloads
and then click on the downloaded file to run it. You'll be prompted if you want to install
this Windows update, just click on yes and then the update will start installing. Once it's finished, you'll
need to restart your computer. So just go ahead and click on restart now. And once your computer has restarted and you've
successfully installed the TLS update, you can go ahead and download 7-Zip or any other
file extraction software if you don't have any installed on your system. I'm going to download 7-Zip from this
webpage and I'll download the 64 bit version. Then just click on the
downloaded file to install it. Click on run, then click on
install and then click on close. Next, you'll need to download
the Windows 10 ISO file. Now to download the Windows 10 ISO file, you'll
need to download the Windows 10 media creation tool and you can download it from this website. But on Windows 7, if you download the media
creation tool and you run that media creation tool on your system by clicking on run,
you might get an error like I do here. And even if you go ahead and you right click
on that file and run it as administrator, it still doesn't work and
you're stuck with this error. Now everything we did up until this point
by installing this easy fix and the Windows update was supposed to
prevent this from happening. But unfortunately, it's
still happening on my system. If the media creation tool is working on your
system, you can go ahead and use it to download the Windows 10 ISO file and I'll link a guide
on the screen showing you how to do that using the media creation tool. But for this guide, I'm going to download
the Windows 10 ISO file from Microsoft, but I'm going to skip the media
creation tool completely. So to do that, we'll need to download Google
Chrome and you can download Google Chrome from this web page. And it has to be Google Chrome as the steps
I'm going to show you are going to be specific to Google Chrome. So just go ahead and run the Chrome setup
file and then click on run so it can start the Chrome installation. Once the installation is complete, just
click on close and close your other browser. If you are already using Chrome, you can just
go ahead and follow the next steps I'm going to show in this guide. So open Google Chrome and then go
to the Windows 10 download page. Now once you're on this page, you'll see that
there's no way that you can download the ISO file right here. You have to use the media creation tool, but
to skip that, go to these three little dots and click on that, then go to more
tools and then go to developer tools. Now once the developer tools are open here
on the right, go ahead and click on these three little dots, then go to more
tools and then go to network conditions. Now here at the bottom, you'll see network
conditions and you need to scroll down here and here where it says user agent,
you need to uncheck this box. Then here it says custom, click on this drop
down menu and change this to Blackberry BB10 and once you've done that, you
can go ahead and reload this page. Now once the page is reloaded, you'll see
this message that says you've been routed to this page because the operating system
you're using won't support the Windows 10 media creation tool. Now once you see that, just scroll all the
way down until you get to this option where it says Windows 10 update version 22H2 and
here you can click on select edition and then Windows 10 multi edition
ISO, then click on confirm. Next, select your product language and this
is very important as it's going to determine if you'll be able to keep all of your files
and apps during the Windows 10 upgrade. So if you click on this drop down
menu, you can choose a language here. For English, there are two versions. There's a US version and an international version. Basically if you live in Britain or EU, you
will probably be using the English international version but if you don't know what to choose
here, just select one of them and then download it and in the next steps, you're going to
see if you'll be able to keep your files and apps if you continue with the upgrade and
if you can't keep your files and apps, just come back to this step and then download the
other ISO file and then you should be able to keep your files and apps. I'm going to go ahead and select the English
US version because that's what I have installed on my computer, then click on confirm and
then here you'll be able to download the 64 bit version or the 32 bit version
of the Windows 10 ISO file. I have 64 bit installed, so I'll click on
64 bit download and then the Windows 10 ISO file will start downloading and we'll just
need to wait for this to finish before we can continue with the guide. Now once the ISO file is finished downloading,
you can go ahead and click on show in folder to show it in folder and to open this ISO file,
we'll need to use file extraction software so you can go ahead and right click on it
and then you'll see the 7-zip option here if you downloaded 7-zip like I did earlier
in this video and then you can choose this option that says extract to and then this
file name and then it's going to extract the Windows 10 installation files to that folder. So we'll just need to wait for this to finish. Once the file extraction is finished, you
can go ahead and look for that folder inside of the folder where you downloaded the ISO
file to and here I have this Windows 10 folder. So if I open that, I find this setup application
and now to start the Windows 10 installation, select this file then right click on it and
then click on run as administrator and then the Windows 10 setup wizard will launch. On this screen, click on this option that says
change how Windows setup downloads updates and then click on not right now and also make
sure this box is unchecked down here then click on next. It'll do some checks on your PC. Next you'll see this screen where you'll
need to accept the terms, you can just go ahead and click on accept and it'll
do some more checks on your computer. Now during these checks that the Windows 10
setup runs on your computer, you might be prompted to uninstall incompatible software
that you currently have installed on Windows 7 and you'll need to uninstall those programs
before you can continue with the upgrade to Windows 10 but it's really straightforward. You should see a button to uninstall the
software inside of this Windows 10 setup screen. Now, once it's finished checking your PC,
you'll see this screen which says ready to install and it'll install Windows 10 and you'll
be able to keep your personal files and apps. If you want to change what to keep, you can
click on this option that says change what to keep and then you can keep your personal
files and apps, your personal files only or you can keep nothing which basically means
your computer will be formatted and Windows 10 will be installed in the process but I'll
keep this on keep personal files and apps because I do have some files saved on this
computer that I want to keep and apps that I still want to use on Windows 10. Now, like I explained earlier, if you don't
have this option to keep your personal files and apps, it means you didn't select the correct
language when you were downloading the Windows 10 ISO file. So go back to that step and choose another
language when downloading the Windows 10 ISO file and then you'll be able to
keep your personal files and apps. So I'm going to go ahead and click on next
and now once you're ready to install, just go ahead and click on install and then
the Windows 10 installation will start. Now typically this will take around one to
two hours depending on if you have Windows installed on an SSD or a hard drive. So at this point you can just leave the computer
to do its thing and install Windows 10 and when you get back, you should have
Windows 10 installed on your computer. Now, as you can see here, I finally reached
the desktop on Windows 10 and I still have access to all of my files and
apps that I had on Windows 7. Now from here, right click on the start button,
then click on settings, then click on update and security and then you can go ahead and
check for updates if it's not already installing updates. So you can go ahead and install all of the
latest updates for Windows 10 and any drivers that it might find. And at the end of this video, I'll link some
more videos that will show you how to properly update your drivers on Windows 10. But next you're on the left, go to activation
and then just check if your edition of Windows is activated. As you can see, mine is activated with a digital
license, which means my Windows 7 license was converted to Windows 10. But that's been my guide on how to upgrade
from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without losing any data for free. And I'll link some more useful guides on the
screen now, one of them being how to update from Windows 10 to Windows
11 on unsupported hardware. And if this guide helped you out, please like
the video and subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you in the next one.
