Now that support for Windows 7 has ended and updates stopped as of January 15th 2020 the upgrade to Windows 10 is more important than ever. When Windows 10 was first released, Microsoft announced a promotion that allowed Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. This promotion ended in 2017, but this method still works to upgrade older computers to Windows 10 for free. (provided the Windows 7 computer that you have has a valid Windows 7 licence)
With his method you will need PowerShell installed to do the upgrade, but I’ll explain how to do it.
When upgrading to Windows 10 your older licence will be converted to a Windows 10 digital licence that is tied to that specific computer, and if your computer has the required configuration to instal Windows 10 it could save you some money as well as there will be no need to fork out for a new PC.
This method is almost automatic, it might require some minor intervention in case the instal is stopped by an antivirus or some other program.
So, without too much yapping here it is:
How to upgrade to Windows 10 for free
Before we begin the upgrade process we need to perform a few steps to prepare the computer and ensure the upgrade will not be stopped in the middle of the process.
The first step will make sure your computer is ready for Windows 10 so for this download the Microsoft Readiness Tool from Microsoft by clicking here
Once downloaded just run the tool and see if anything recommended, if all ok move to the next faze and if not try to complete the steps provided so your PC is ready for the upgrade
If you need help with this Contact Us and we’ll have a look if the upgrade can be done.
Since this upgrade involves using PowerShell we need to make sure you have this on your Windows 7 PC, for this make sure you have at least the SP1 installed, if not at the time of writing this you can still get it here.
Once this is done and ready to upgrade click the start button, type in PowerShell and when comes up right click and choose “Run as Administrator”. Because PowerShell is not running script by default we need to change a registry key so to do that when PowerShell opens up with the administrator rights type this in and press Enter:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
After this you can close PowerShell.
Next will come the installation script, you can download this upgrade.Ps1 file to your computer or if you want to create this file manually open up a new text (or notepadd++) file and copy and paste this into the text file then save it as upgrade.ps1 (or whatever you want to name it just make sure it has the ps.1 extension)
$dir =
mkdir $dir
$webClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$url = “https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=799445“
$file = “$($dir)\Win10Upgrade.exe“
$webClient.DownloadFile($url,$file)
Start-Process -FilePath $file -ArgumentList “/quietinstall /skipeula /auto upgrade /copylogs $dir“ -verb runas
Delete the extra blank spaces between the lines, and you might also have to replace those quotes with straight quotes, save it to your desired .Ps1 name somewhere on your desktop or Documents folder.
Starting the automated process.
Right-click on your new .PS1 file and select “Run with PowerShell.” You will probably have to confirm at least one prompt, allowing “Microsoft Windows” to make changes to your computer, but that’s it. A PowerShell window will briefly appear and disappear, and then you won’t see anything else for some time. If you want to make sure it is running you can open up the task manager and check that “Windows10UpgraderApp.exe” is running.
Your computer will restart once or twice while doing the upgrade and you will know when its done when you will be greated with the Windows 10 setup screen, go through the setup screen and youre done.
One last note, some programs might not work in Windows 10 although they worked in Windows 7 but you can most likely update or download the version comaptible with Windows 10.
Now there is just one last step to do, we have to reverse the execution policy back so open up again PowerShell as administrator and this time type in:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted
Once this is done you’re ready to use Windows 10 just make sure you check for updates to get the most up-to-date version.
