You'll actually be upgrading to Windows 8.1. If you have a Windows 8 license, I'd recommend starting with that instead of Windows 7. But this is important: Your XP or Vista license won't do it. I purchased a bunch of cheap Windows 8 licenses, so I had a few I could pull from. Many of us have a bunch of licenses left over from machines we've taken out of service, so dig around. To get the free Windows 10 upgrade, you need to sacrifice a Windows 7 or Windows 8 license. You're actually going to be upgrading to Windows 7 or Windows 8, and then to Windows 10.

This could be the sticking point for some of you. I recently bought a 16GB thumb drive from Amazon for about $5, and most of us have some spare USB sticks laying around.Īn unused, sacrificial Windows 7 or Windows 8 license code. Here are some of the things you'll probably need to make the jump.Ī thumb drive with at least 4GB of space. The key, I found, was to make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM for a 32-bit upgrade or 2GB for a 64-bit upgrade. Here's a helpful guide on what you'll need to do, including links to the Microsoft compatibility checker. Pre-game preparationīefore you start to gather the materials and supplies you'll need to do the upgrade, you should make sure your machine can actually run Windows 10. In fact, some folks have reported that newer OS versions actually increase the performance of those old machines.

Both Windows 8 and Windows 10 run on old hardware really nicely. That means moving to Windows 10.Īnother reason is that newer versions of Windows have been able to breathe new life into these old machines. If I can hand-me-down something that's growing weeds in my garage, but would be a true help to someone else, why not? That said, while I don't mind giving someone an old, slow machine, I will not give them an unsafe one. I sometimes bump into people in my community who desperately need a computer. Then, there's the good-deed side of things. But I often press old machines into service for some project or another. First, of course, I write about this stuff. There were a few reasons I decided to do the upgrades.

In my case, I had a few machines sitting in my garage that still had Windows XP on them (and one with, I kid you not, Vista). Some might call it nagging, but let's not quibble. Microsoft has gone out of its way to make upgrading to Windows 10 easy. With final public release only weeks away, the most interesting feature is one you can't see at all.įor those running Windows 7 or Windows 8, the upgrade is straightforward. Members of the Windows Insider Program can now install build 14383. Microsoft pushes near-final build of Windows 10 Anniversary Update

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