No king rules forever, and after a long 10-year life, support for Windows 7 comes to an end. As of January 2020, this operating system, which still has almost a 40% market share, will no longer receive updates, neither maintenance nor security (although companies will continue to receive paid emergency updates as happened with Windows XP), leaving users who do not update to a more modern version of the operating system at risk from the least vulnerability that appears for the operating system.
Windows 10 has been among users for almost 4 years and, in all that time, it has evolved, improved and changed almost everything that users did not like, both in privacy and in security, stability and performance. Today, leaving aside the problems of the October 2018 Update with older hardware, Windows 10 has become a worthy successor to Windows 7 (although there are those who will always deny it) and this operating system will work exactly as stable and faster than Windows 7 on any other computer.
Taking advantage of the end of support for Windows 7 is just around the corner , in this article we are going to collect everything we need to know to update from Windows 7 to Windows 10, from who can do it and everything we need to a guide, step by step, to be able to carry out the whole process without losing our data.
Which users can upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10
If we run Windows 7 we can run Windows 10, there is no problem in this. The minimum requirements of Windows 10 are exactly the same as those of Windows 7, and consumption today is very similar, so if Windows 7 goes fast, 10 will go too, and if 7 goes slow, 10 will go too. We cannot expect miracles if we use old hardware, unless we want to replace the normal hard drive of our computer with an SSD, in which case we will see a notable improvement in performance.
If we are using Windows Vista or Windows XP, the two operating systems prior to Windows 7, we may have to go through 7 before making the leap to Windows 10, and Microsoft may not make it very easy for us to do so, so What we must do in this case is to format our computer directly and install Windows 10 from scratch , losing the programs and files saved on the hard drive (we must make a backup first).
For the rest, we should not have compatibility problems to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 . Practically all modern and updated programs that work in 7 will work in the same way in 10 as both operating systems share the same kernel, and we will not encounter memory, storage or incompatible hardware restrictions that we did not have in Windows 7.
Problems that we can find when updating Windows 7 to Windows 10
What we do have to bear in mind is that compatibility problems may not be the only ones we have to face. The process of updating to the new version of Windows 10 is quite complex and sensitive, a problem can cause it to fail and either the changes are reverted (in which case nothing would happen), or our system and the data would be totally unusable of our hard in danger of disappearing.
To prevent this from happening, the first thing we should try is that Windows 7 is as up-to-date as possible with all the updates released through Windows Update, since Microsoft usually releases patches to improve compatibility in the update process every little time. In addition, it is necessary that the system files have not been modified by third-party applications. If we have used activators or aggressive applications to modify the appearance of Windows or other aspects of the operating system, we run a serious risk that the update will go wrong. In that case, before continuing we must check the integrity of the Windows system files, restoring the original files to minimize the probability that something will go wrong.
Finally, some very aggressive applications, such as antivirus, firewall or other applications that make changes at a very low level in our operating system give many problems during the update. Although the operating system itself will uninstall them if it detects a program that may cause problems, the best we can do is, before starting to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 , manually uninstall the antivirus and other programs that we think may cause problems. To avoid compatibility problems we must also make sure to use the latest versions of all the applications that we have installed.
Windows 10 comes with Windows Defender , one of the best antivirus that we can find today. We can safely uninstall our antivirus that, when we update to Windows 10, we will be perfectly protected.
What we need to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without losing data
We have already said that we need to have a Windows 7 computer , all security and feature updates installed, antivirus uninstalled, and applications updated to the latest versions. All this, together with an Internet connection, make our computer ready to receive the new Windows 10. The process of updating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 will keep all the data on our hard drive without deleting, however, we remember that It is a very delicate process and that can fail for various reasons, so before continuing we would recommend that you make a backup copy of the most important files, so that it may happen.
The truth is that programs and configurations are data that we can download again from the Internet and that, spending a little time, its loss is not a problem. However, our music, our personal videos, all the photos, the documents… we must save all of this on another hard drive (if we have one) or, at least, on a USB stick or in the cloud. In this way, if something goes wrong when upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and the data is lost, we can recover it.
Backups are very important, especially when we are going to do something of this type.
With our computer already prepared, and taking into account the requirements and possible problems that we may face, we are going to see step by step how to update Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Step by step: how to upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10
Once we have our Windows 7 updated and ready to receive the update, in addition to having made, just in case, a backup of our most important files, the next thing we will do is download the wizard to update to Windows 10 , too known as Media Creation Tool , or media creation tool, from the following link.
- Once this application is downloaded, we run it on our computer with administrator permissions. The application will do some preparations and checks to ensure compatibility with the update process and to minimize the likelihood of something going wrong.
- After accepting the terms of use and carrying out other checks and other preparations, then we will be able to see a new window where it will ask us if we want to update this computer directly from the application (recommended option) or if we want to download the ISO to create a DVD or a USB of installation.
- We choose the first option (if you want to create a Windows 10 installation USB, we recommend reading the previous manual) and the tool itself will take care of everything else, that is, it will automatically download the latest version of Windows 10, create a temporary medium for installation and will take care of all the preparations and check for updates to both Windows 7 and the downloaded version of Windows 10 to make sure nothing goes wrong.
- We accept the Windows 10 license terms again and let the tool continue to do its checks.
- Next we will see a new window with the elements that require our attention. Here we will be able to check the files that we want to be saved during the operating system update process. We can choose if we want all the data and programs to be saved, only the data (uninstalling the programs) or if we want to erase everything and install a clean Windows 10.
- Also, if an incompatible driver or program is detected, as can be seen in the following screenshot, we will see a warning that this can give us problems.
- If we have some type of incompatible software, before continuing it is advisable to uninstall it, since if we do not do so we may have problems starting Windows after updating it. Once uninstalled, or if we want to risk carrying out the update anyway, we confirm that we have seen these problems and continue.
- If everything is correct, we can see a summary with the update process. Here we will see the version to which we are going to update according to our license (in our case we are going to update from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro ) and what will happen to the data and personal programs that we have on the computer.
- Then we save everything we are doing, click on the "Install" button and the upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10 will begin . This process can take from several minutes to a few hours depending on our hardware and the data on our computer. In addition, during the process we will not be able to use the equipment, so we must take this into account.
- This wizard will take care of everything, installing and configuring Windows 10 and getting it ready. The computer will restart several times during the process, although we will not have to do anything, the whole process will be completely automatic until the end, when we will have to choose the privacy options and the Microsoft services that we want to use.
- We have already upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 10 . As we can see, the process is very simple and, if our system is up to date and parts of it have not been modified, relatively safe. If we have chosen to keep the programs and personal files we can find them in the same place where we had them.
What to do after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10
When the upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is finished, we will have the new Microsoft operating system installed on our computer, keeping (or not, depending on what we have chosen) all the data and all the programs and settings.
The first thing we should do is be connected to the Internet so that the operating system itself takes care of looking for updates in Windows Update , updates that can be minor patches for the operating system or, for example, the graphics drivers or any other component of the system. We can also check for these updates manually by typing "Windows Update" in the white box at the bottom.
The next thing will be to check that all the programs that we had installed and used are installed in Windows 10 anyway. Applications such as Photoshop, Google Chrome or the Office suite should be the same as in Windows 7 if we have decided to keep the programs installed. All our personal files should also be in their corresponding folders; the update process only makes changes to the directory "Windows" and "Program Files" on the hard disk, it should not have changed more.
If we are missing a program, it is because Windows has eliminated it during the update. In that case, we simply have to search for it online again and reinstall it.
Regarding security, Windows 10 comes with Windows Defender , an excellent antivirus installed by default that will allow us to be protected at all times while we are connected to the Internet. This antivirus, in addition to having one of the highest malware detection rates and the best marks in tests such as AV-Test, also has additional security modules, such as a module against exploits, or security measures against ranwomware.
We already have Windows 10 installed on our computer. Now we can only discover all the news of this operating system that, in a few months, will succeed Windows 7.
How to uninstall Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7
There are still many users against Windows 10 and who, despite having given it more than one chance, do not end up feeling comfortable with it. In that case, Microsoft gives us a grace period of 10 days during which we will be able to go back, uninstall Windows 10 and return to Windows 7 as we had before updating our computer.
To do this, we will open the Windows 10 Settings menu and, in the " Update and security " section, we will select the "Recovery" option . Here we will see an entry called « Back to Windows 7 «.
Microsoft will ask us why we want to leave Windows 10 behind and go back to Windows 7. We can tell them why, not tell them anything or lie to them, that's already up to us. What is clear is that they will move on from the comment we leave them.
The wizard will ask us if we want to check for updates before going back, just in case there are any that solve our problems. If we decide to go ahead, we will see a message that will tell us that after resetting Windows 10 we will have to reinstall some programs that will be uninstalled for compatibility reasons. In addition, we will also lose some settings made in Windows 10 that are not compatible with Windows 7.
We will also see a notice that we must remember the password we had in Windows 7 , or we will not be able to log into the operating system.
If we agree with everything and want to return to Windows 7, we simply click on " Return to Windows 7 " and that's it.
The computer will restart several times, just like during the Windows 10 update process, and after several minutes we will be back in Windows 7 as we had before starting the update.
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