For users who are running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, Windows 10 is available as a free upgrade for the first year after it was released on July 29th. However, if you don’t upgrade within that first year, you will have to buy the operating system if you decide to upgrade.

If you haven’t registered for the upgrade yet, do so from the upgrade tool available in the lower-right corner of your screen — click the Windows icon and perform the necessary steps. During the procedure, you’ll also be told whether your computer can handle the upgrade.

However, you may want to wait, or at least be very careful, before you make the jump to Windows 10.

If you do decide that you want to upgrade, here are some things that you will need to do first:

• Install the latest updates on your operating system
• Make a backup of everything on your system. The easiest way to do this is to use built-in tools with Windows 7 or 8.1. If something goes wrong during the upgrade process, you want to have a way to restore your computer to way it was before the upgrade.
• Be sure to backup your data (documents, pictures, videos, music, etc.), create a separate copy of your data on external drive prior to upgrading.

And if you decided to go back to your previous version of Windows (7 or 8.1) you have only 30 days to do this, according to Microsoft.

If you feel that this is beyond your technical ability, we encourage you to give us a call.