Windows 7 to Windows 10 (Saying 'Insider Preview'?)

I started the process of upgrading to Win10 but something caught my eye that made me hesitate.


Am I overthinking this or is my PC actually trying to install the insider preview rather than the official Win10 release?

To avoid any doubt about installing Windows 10 Retail instead of the Insider Preview which right now is on another post RTM Beta (Beta with bugs) - do a manual RTM non Preview install:

This is the official Microsoft page to create the Windows 10 ISO DVD/USB: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

To install a free upgrade to Windows 10, you need to have Windows 7/8 (not Windows Vista or Windows XP) registered with a legitimate Microsoft Key.
You actually need to have an activated running Windows 7/8 installation first.

Install Windows 10 over your existing Windows 7/8 installation - and activate Windows 10 in this way.
This will register your machine with Microsoft for use with Windows 10.

After you have done that, you can either continue to use your installed and activated Windows 10 or you can format/fresh install Windows 10 at any point in the future, because your machine is now registered with Microsoft for use with Windows 10.


You cannot fresh install Windows 10 before you've activated it previously at least once, after installing it over your existing Windows 7/8 installation.

And to add to the above.

When you use the installation media, make sure you perform the upgrade from within your current Windows installation.

Don't enter any product key at any stage during the upgrade. It may ask for a product key a couple of times, but just leave the box blank and skip the page.

Also, if you haven't done, make a full image of your system prior to the upgrade. Or at least backup all your important documents, files, photos, videos, music etc etc as an absolute minimum. Although the upgrade should work well, there is always a risk of data corruption and data loss during an upgrade.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply! I'll give that a shot. I guess I just assumed installing off of a USB/disc would have to be a fresh install. No worries about a backup either as I got an ssd for the process. My full win 7 system is safely on my old hdd

cozumel said:

And to add to the above.

When you use the installation media, make sure you perform the upgrade from within your current Windows installation.

Click to expand...

And in case this is not clear enough (and I mention this because it might not have been to me... )

Put the DVD/USB stick in and run the setup.exe (or maybe setup64.exe) from whatever Windows OS you are presently running (7 and up, that is.)

With all the dumb little issues I had, all I had to do was burn the .iso and run the update that way. Worked like a champ!