Does updating to Win10 from Win7 Retain your applications successfully?

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If there’s a more appropriate forum to ask this question, I apologize and please let me know!

Thanks!

Terry D.

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Microsoft has discontinued the free upgrade from Win7/8.1 to Win10 and turned off the Activation Servers for Win7/8.1. The Media Creation Tool no longer works on Win7.

You can upgrade to Win10 by using installation media (DVD/USB/ISO) with a valid Win10 license. But you must have a pre-owned valid license key because Microsoft no longer sells Win10. And the installation will require a Clean Install, meaning you will also have to have the install media and license keys for any programs you need to install.

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PKCano wrote:

And the installation will require a Clean Install

Not sure that’s actually true.

When you run the Media Creation Tool on a PC containing an older/different version of Windows and select the Upgrade this PC now option, there’s a point during the process where it asks you to input your Product Key (i.e. License key).

If you’ve purchased a valid Windows 10 key, entering it at this point “should” allow the installation to proceed, activate Windows 10, and keep all your existing software/settings intact.

An alternate would be to enter the proper “generic product key” for the version of Windows 10 you want at that point which “should” also allow the installation to succeed, but Windows 10 would be in an unactivated/unlicensed state and you’d need to activate it using your real Windows 10 key.

Of course, the Windows 10 key would need to be a retail not OEM version for either of those to work.

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And Terry D,

If either of those methods work, it would keep all you existing software/settings without having to reinstall them.

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The Media Creation Tool still works with the TLS 1.2 protocol enabled. It seems not to be understood by some that the Media Creation Tool is not some free upgrade tool to be written off, but continues to be the only official way of obtaining Windows 10 including an iso file for Windows 7 thru 11. The Media Creation Tool continues working by default in Windows 8.1 despite the free upgrade offer discontinued there, too.

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Well I guess the question I should have asked was whether that’s possible with the newest Windows, which is Windows 11.

Thank you for the quick reply and thanks in advance for any answers to the more informed question!

Terry D.

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Make an image backup and backup boot USB before you do anything. Then you can revert if it goes pear shaped.

cheers, Paul

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Probably not since any PC still running Windows 7 likely won’t pass the stringent hardware requirements to install Windows 11.

• it must be using an approved 64-bit processor

• it must support TPM 2.0

• it must use UEFI and support Secure Boot

• it must support DirectX 12 or newer graphics with WDDM 2.0 driver

If it meets all those requirements, then it “should” be possible to upgrade to Win 11 using the same Win 10 upgrade process and keep you existing software.

However, it’d probably be better to upgrade to Windows 10 first (which doesn’t have those same hardware requirements), verify everything works as expected and your PC is stable and then, if you still really want it, upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 (bearing in mind the PC will still have to meet the above hardware requirements for the upgrade to work.)

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