How to upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 Safely

Warning:  If you value your privacy upgrading to Windows 10 needs some consideration.  As with every release of Windows, you have to judge what is good and bad about any new product.  Before you upgrade, I suggest you read about Window 10 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10.  With that said, Windows 10 is a bad ass upgrade that will enhance your productivity and online experience at the sacrifice of your privacy and to some extent, online security.

Advantages:

• In my book, “The Internet is Infected!” I wrote extensively about how to use VMware Player and VirtualBox to install and load up Windows 7 with virtual Linux OSs.  Windows 10 comes with a built in Hyper-V virtualization solution that may be better.  I will blog about Hyper-V in the future when I can find time to try it out with some Linux installs.
• Windows 10 comes with a built-in email app that was as easy to setup as inputting your email address and password.  I tried it with Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail, and it worked perfectly for all three.
• I only have a few third party applications installed but there is a noticeable performance improvement over Windows 7.  My very old HP-dv6t laptop is screamingly fast.
• Windows 10 comes fully integrated with Windows Defender and Windows Firewall.  Windows Defender uses real-time protection to scan everything you download or run on your PC.  In Windows 7 we had to install and update Microsoft Security Essentials.  If you prefer other more highly rated antivirus software Windows Defender will turn itself off when you install another antivirus app alleviating the concern of conflicting antivirus software running.
• Windows 10 is fully integrated with Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage.  Your OS is automatically set up for it when you log in with a Microsoft Account.  In my case I set up/logged in to Microsoft’s new email app and OneDrive was available.  It is as easy to use as drag and drop using the Windows 10 “File Explorer”.  If you right click on the OneDrive icon in the notification area, you can select Settings and do things such as select folders to sync, access your files remotely and more.  OneDrive is offering a whopping 15 GB of storage which is more data than most of us can produce in our lifetimes!  (See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneDrive)

Be very careful what you share with Microsoft on your OneDrive or their new Groove for music.  This data is regularly scanned for pirating and illicit content.  What you may think is benign could come back to haunt you in ways you never imagined.  Also understand, these cloud storage places are regularly hacked, are available for provider employees to view as well as the U.S. government NSA.

Disadvantages:

• While I’m still learning the Windows 10 start button, if you can call it that, it does not appear to be very configurable.  There are too many options/links presented there to be able to sift through quickly.  For example, in order to make more of a profit, it looks like Microsoft is guiding users to Grove Music, The Weather Channel, Movie and TV, their Store, and so on.  If I want these things I will add them myself, I don’t need them in my face all time on the menu.  The menu should be what is available to run on the computer and not about what is on the Internet; that’s why we have browsers to do that sort of thing.  However, they can be manually removed.
• I mentioned the privacy concerns above.  In this release, Microsoft is sharing more information about your computer and what you are doing with it in this release.
• There is no way to disable automatic updates.  With Windows 7, I had control over when I would expose my computer to Internet and update the OS.  I usually did this late at night while watching Netflix.  Now when I am using a hotspot Microsoft will announce to the hackers my computer is connected and polling the Internet for updates.  This is very disturbing!

There is a lot more for you to consider that the Wiki page above describes very well.
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My laptop was running a loaded up version of Windows 7 Premium.  Sometime after the July 29, 2015 release of Windows 10, I registered the laptop for an upgrade to Windows 10.  As with all Microsoft releases I waited a few months to see if there were any major problems with the 10 release.  All the articles I have read have praised Microsoft for a smooth rollout of Windows 10 and its new interface.

Because Windows 10 had addressed many of the complaints I had heard about in Windows 8 and 8.1, I wanted to take the plunge and upgrade my laptop.  I registered it and attempted the upgrade to 10.  The upgrade failed so I examined the event log, searched for the error code on the Internet and tried various fixes.  The Microsoft community recommended the usual stuff such as:

• Turn off my antivirus (which was Security Essentials)
• Make sure the computer is not configured for a proxy
• Turn off all services except the Microsoft services
• Open a command prompt with “Run as Administrator” and type “sfc /scannow”
• Manually reset the Windows Update process
• Delete the C:\$Windows~BT folder and everything in the download folder

And so on as I tried many things…  I finally got the install to go all the way to the end only to fail and have to start over at the beginning each time.  This was wasting way too much of my valuable time.

Therefore, I decided to change strategies.  I used an old hard drive for my laptop that I swapped with my Windows 7 drive, zeroed it and loaded it up with a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate.  I applied all system updates and left the Windows 7 OS as clean as possible.  (NOTE:  You have to have SP1 installed)  I was hoping I would not have to upgrade to 10 by having a clean version of Windows 7.  I downloaded Windows 10, burnt the ISO file to a DVD and attempted to do a clean install.  (See:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10)  The install prompted for a Windows 10 license key so I tried my Windows 7 keys.  I had no luck there so I was stuck with doing an upgrade which I was adverse to do.

To do an upgrade:

1. Activate Windows 7 (required to upgrade, which is unfortunate.  It is always nice to see if things are going to work before burning a new Windows OS activation).
2. Log in to Windows 7 as administrator.
3. Run the “setup.exe” from autoplay or from the DVD drive.
4. On the “User Account Control” confirmation box, click Yes to continue.  Windows will prepare the files for installation.
5. On the “Get important updates” window, make sure that the “Download and install updates” radio button is selected.

From there the upgrade is self-explanatory by following the Windows 10 installation prompts.  This upgrade can also be performed by using Windows Update, but if you have multiple computers you may have to perform this process again having the DVD is a better solution.

If you want to do a clean install there is hope.  There is an excellent article at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/how-to-do-a-clean-install-of-windows-10-from-windows-7-and-8/ that describes how to do that in a two-step process.  It is fairly straightforward and requires an upgrade, creation of a Window 10 install DVD, and then a reinstall of Windows 10 which is pretty slick.  After purchasing a new terabyte SSD for my old laptop I chose to use this option.  The results were pronominal!  A clean install that for my old laptop turned it into a Ninga warrior.  I highly recommend this upgrade option.

You may also want to burn a reinstall Windows 10 DVD for your current computer which the article above describes how to do.  Unfortunately, with that DVD this license key may only work on your current hardware with that DVD.  Other computers with different hardware will likely require my procedure outlined above.

When you are done and the Windows 10 OS is stable you may want to clean it up  (See:  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/How-do-I-remove-the-Windows-old-folder).

1. Open Disk Cleanup by clicking on the Start button,  In the search box, type Disk Cleanup, and then, in the list of results, click Disk Cleanup.  If/when prompted click on the drive where you just installed/upgraded to Windows 10.
2. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, on the Disk Cleanup tab, click on Clean up system files.  Once again, choose the drive you just upgrade to Windows 10.
3. Select the Previous Windows installations(s) check box, and any other boxes for the files you want to delete, and then click OK.
4. In the dialog message that appears, click Delete Files.

The easy integration with Microsoft's cloud is your opportunity to backup everything on your computer that does not require privacy.  I took the opportunity to spend weeks going through my backups, deleting files and copying downloads and such to my OneDrive.  If my house catches of fire I will have all the files I'm not worried about keeping private.