How to Upgrade to Windows 10 for Free, Even Now

When Windows 10 was announced, Microsoft had offered a free update for existing PC users, but only before July 29, 2016. If you haven’t already upgraded to Windows 10 you’d think that this means you need to pay for it now. Perhaps you were too lazy or put off by Microsoft’s aggressive upgrade tactics. If you’re thinking about getting Windows 10 now, there’s no need to worry about spending money, because the free upgrade offer is still available.

We’ve already highlighted one easy trick to get the upgrade for free but that is meant for those who use assistive technologies only. Microsoft doesn’t really check whether you use those tools, so you can go ahead and upgrade to Windows 10 for free anyway. However, if you’re the honest and upright type, there’s another method to upgrade which we found out about recently.

We were one of those who didn’t upgrade their Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 PCs when the free upgrade offer was on. Our old Windows 7 Ultimate-powered PC was running just fine and we didn’t see the full-screen upgrade pop-ups that Microsoft had been pushing across the world. Fast forward to 2017 and we finally decided to check if the machine can be upgraded. We followed these steps and they worked great. Note that you need a PC running a genuine, activated Windows 7 or 8.1 to get the upgrade.

If you have any work on the PC, we suggest you save and close it now. Then follow these steps to update your Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 for free:

1. Open the Windows 10 download page.
2. Click Download tool now.
3. Once the download is complete, double-click the downloaded file.
4. Click Accept at the Terms and Conditions prompt screen.
5. Click Upgrade this PC now to upgrade the machine.
6. Now sit back and wait until the Windows 10 download is complete.
7. After the download is complete, the tool will automatically verify the download. This tends to stay at 0 percent for a few minutes and then zip to 90 percent and beyond, so be patient.
8. After this the tool will automatically begin creating Windows 10 media. Wait until it’s done.
9. Once again, you’ll be asked to check some license terms. Click Accept.
10. Now the tool will download updates. After this you won’t be able to work until the Windows 10 installation is complete.
11. The tool will now tell you that it’s ready to install Windows 10. Click Install. Now the waiting game begins. It took around an hour for the Windows 10 upgrade to complete on our PC. It’ll restart a few times and finally boot into Windows 10.

Once the upgrade is complete, you may face some minor issues. In our case the display resolution was locked to a 4:3 aspect ratio on our 16:9 monitor. A restart fixed the problem, so we’d suggest trying this first before looking for other troubleshooting methods. Otherwise we had no issues and the PC is now running Windows 10 smoothly.

For more tutorials, head to our How To section.