I want to update to windows 8.1 from the Windows 8 installation that came with my computer. In Windows Store I see that there is an update to 8.1 (about 3.6GB). Will all my files, programs, apps, and data remain as they were in Windows 8?  Normally when you install windows on a computer without it, all the data on the C drive is removed, will this happen with the 8.1 update from the Windows Store?
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I installed Windows 8.1 from within Window 8 and noticed my apps don't work anymore, some are gone and a ton of stuff is missing. Is there no way to keep all the Windows settings and apps when doing this upgrade?
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I've got a Windows 7 Pro 32 bit PC. Getting a new Windows 7 Home 64 bit.  Is there anything I can use to transfer my  programs (the ones that don't come in a 64 bit flavor)  to the new PC? There is a related  that doesn't address the programs part.
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I am trying to get Windows 10 to install on my brand-new 8.1 laptop. As some background, when I first started up the laptop, I was shown the GWX dialog asking if I wanted to register for Windows 10. After that, the GWX icon would not appear in the system tray until I installed every possible update, including optional updates, , and rebooted my computer several times.  Now the GWX icon shows up and my system has downloaded 6.5 gigabytes of files into the hidden download folder at $Windows.~BT . The size of the folder has not changed for several hours and I see no indication that Windows 10 is still downloading.   If I run the setup.exe in that directory, I get an error that boot.wim is missing. Is that normal or did something go wrong? What can I do now?   Windows 8.1 Every possible Windows update installed Exceeds system requirements GWX icon shows GWX app has confirmation
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I have an ASUS X205TA with MS Windows 8.1.  This has a 32 GB drive, but it also uses WIMBoot and has a recovery partition.  I am unable to get more than 7.5 GB of free space.  Microsoft offer a Windows 10 media creation tool to allow people to create a USB stick to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.  I place a newly formatted 16 GB USB stick in. I download the tool from Windows. I start the tool.  The tool doesn't ever ask me where to download the stuff.  I step through the tool, it gathers info, and it stops with the error message "We need 8 GB of disc space. Remove any files or apps that you no longer need, or use Disk Cleanup to create some space, then try again".  How do I upgrade to Windows 10 with the limited amount of drive space I have available? Especially if the media creation tool can't do it.
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On a relative's laptop I had selected custom installation for Office and installed only Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Recently I was doing some spring-cleaning and noticed that Windows Update (which is set to provide updates for all installed Microsoft products) is offering updates for Office apps that are not even installed! Take a look at a snippet of the update list below:    What do any of these have to do with the 3 installed apps?  BTW, I found a similar question , but I already know how to hide the updates and the same ones are never offered to me again, so that's not the issue here. What I want to know is, does anyone know why Windows Update thinks these updates might be required? I searched the laptop for files mentioned in the KB pages for the updates, and couldn't locate them anywhere. Should I still install the security updates at least, or are they just being offered by mistake and is it fine to hide them?
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I just installed Windows 8.1 on my computer. I am trying to create a recovery drive.  I click start, type "recovery", hit "Create a recovery drive". I click next once, and this is what I see:     We can't create a recovery drive on this PC      Some required files are missing. To troubleshoot problems when your PC   can't start, use your Windows installation disc or media.   This seems to be a common problem with Windows 8.1, but so far I haven't found a solution.
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I upgraded Windows 10 to version 1803 recently, and I discovered that I now have an extra local disk (drive D) which only has about 500 MB space.  After checking in the Disk Management interface, I found that it is a small partition at the front of my drive. I remember this is where Windows stores a copy of the previous version and it should not be visible.  Is there anything wrong with my installation? Should I delete this partition?  Update  Based on discussions on SU and other sources from the Internet, this is a minor issue with the Windows update, and the partition can be hidden easily. Please check the answer section.
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So, I have Windows 7 pro, and I'm looking to upgrade so that I can use some of the apps that are only available in Windows 8+. I considered just taking advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade, and actually installed it at one point, but then I found out that there's forced automatic updates and decided that wasn't for me(I'm a bit paranoid after Android 4.4.4 killed Flash Player without telling me. :P). So, I did some research.   From what I read, the Windows 10 upgrade "consumes" your Windows 7 license into a Windows 10 license, and so even if you revert back after upgrading then you can still change your mind later and jump back to Windows 10. () I also read that Windows 10 has "downgrade" rights to Windows 8 and Windows 7, which to my understanding meant that if you have a Windows 10 key, you can also use it to install Windows 8 or 7 if you want. ()  My plan for the process is re-upgrade to 10, pull the license key, downgrade to 8 and use the license key, then upgrade to 8.1 via Windows Store, and end up on 8.1. So my questions are: Is this possible?  Will it wipe all my data in the process?(not a dealbreaker if it does, but I'd need to know that so I can back it up) Do I need to re-upgrade to 10 in order to downgrade to 8?  Any input is definitely appreciated. Thanks!
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I recently purchased an HP Stream 7, which I was led to believe would have Windows 8.1 64-bit installed. However, it has 32-bit Windows, even though it has a 64-bit processor. Installing 64-bit has been problematic, and I found the reason is the 32-bit UEFI. Is there a way to change it or replace it with a 64-bit UEFI? Are there any other options for installing Windows 8.1 64-bit? Or is this impossible presently?  Thank you.
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I am using Windows 8 Single Language 64 bit. I have > 350 GB Unallocated space in my hard disk. I want to add this > 350 GB unallocated space to C: drive where Windows is installed. I have checked using 'Extend Volume...' in 'Disk Management', which is currently disabled. Is there some simple way to do this? Kindly don't answer like backup your data and format your hard disk/drive, use third party software, etc. Kindly help me and ask for any further clarifications if needed.
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I am currently running 8.1. I'd like to try out Windows 10 and if I like it upgrade. If not, I'll keep running as I am.   I've never used a virtual machine before: can Window 10 be used from a virtual machine as a "sandbox", and if so how?
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I am installing windows 8.1 for the ASUS laptop.  I have two drive in the laptop namely:  Drive 1 : 40  GB Drive 2 : 450 GB   At the time of installation I have formated Drive 1 which I was suppose to use for Operating System installation. After I format I am getting an error:  Error:     Note: After googling I came to know that I need to format whole disk and need to convert the type of disk to GPT. But I have an important data in the drive Drive 2. How to resolve this?
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I'd like to know if given an existing Windows PC, are there any concrete reasons why a clean install should be performed over an update.  Articles like  refer to "bloatware" and "clutter" on the PC and rightly suggest that this might not be something that you want on the upgraded PC.  refers to "crashes" and upgrades being "problematic". Both are fairly non specific as to what these problems might be though.  If I'm happy that there is no bloatware or clutter on the PC prior to the upgrade, are there any specific known issues that can cause specific problems when upgrading rather than clean installing?  Or is it just a case of being sure?
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Microsoft is giving Windows 10 away for free to Windows 7/8/8.1 users. If one reserves Windows 10 with the new notification in the tray area, what will happen to their Windows 7/8/8.1 license?  Are you really getting Windows 10 for free, as in you upgrade from 7/8/8.1 but you still own the previous version of Windows and Windows 10, or are you really trading your old Windows license for a new one?  Basically, after upgrading to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7, will I still own Windows 7? (Will the product key for 7 still work?)
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I have Windows 8 Pro activated with kms. when I open windows store, it doesn't show "win8.1 available". clicking on ms-windows-store:WindowsUpgrade just brings me to windows store main screen  slmgr /dli shows volume_kmsclient channel  I can upgrade it to WMC. Laptop is W8Pro WMC and update is available, it's retail channel  Is W8 for KMS clients delayed or what?
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I have upgraded my Windows 8 to Windows 10 recently. After that, I bought a SSD drive for my notebook and removed the regular HDD drive from it and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 (Home edition). The HDD was put in a external USB case, so I can access my old files and old Windows installation partition as well.  The problem is now I'm having some issues to activate my fresh installation of Windows. I'm not really sure that I should've installed Windows 10 Home or another version.  How can I determine which Windows version is in the old HDD, given that all files are still accessible, but the system itself is not running?  I could just swap the SSD and the HDD again and boot the old system, but it'll be better to find a "software" way of doing that.  addresses what I'm looking for, but for Windows XP. The proposed file doesn't exists in my old installation.
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I'm on a Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) update channel. It's been a while after Microsoft released an update to fix issues in the initial Windows 10 1809 update. But a  where we can download the updates as standalone packages still has a hole instead of download link to the 1809.17763.1 version package:    Windows 10 Update Assistant  is useless as well, since it offers to download April 2018 Update, lol.  So, I can't update my 1803.17134.376 to 1809 even after more than a month since it's initially was released.  (Of course, "drastically improved" Windows Update doesn't suggest the 1809 update, too. Actually, it has been never working on this Win 10 copy, so I used to download all the updates manually via the first link in this post.)  Has anybody figured out a way of how to manually update from 1803 to 1809?  Without hardcore stuff, please, like making bootable media which potentially would have a great chance of destroying the currently installed Win 10 copy.  (I was completely confused by that "Microsoft recommends" wording near the 1809 update on that page and some top articles in Google saying that it was released and ready for production with that quick patch. So, this question is from this confusion.)