Okay, I every single PC I have that I have Windows 7 Pro x64 installed on, both home PC's and work PC's, each one has the FREE upgrade available to Windows 10 Pro x64. I have installed Windows 10 Pro x64 on 4 of the 9 it has been available to. Two I have not upgraded yet due to they are my work PC's that use "QuickBooks" and I do not want to chance messing up our inventory, customers, and especially payroll! Another is an older PC I just added a SSD drive to, but it has an AMD Athlon X2 4200+ and Windows 10 claims this processor is NOT supported. Anyway, I have a few quick questions that hopefully someone will know the answers to. 1) First, is there any way possible to "backup" the upgrade installation BEFORE it has been installed, so I can re-install it if I format and have to reinstall Windows 7 x64 and then want Windows 10 x64 back on it? 2) If it cannot be backed up, does anyone know if you must format and reinstall Windows 7 (or other OS that allows Win10 upgrade for free), will it automatically let you upgrade again for FREE? 3) Is there any type of work-around for the PC I have with the older AMD Athlon X2 4200+ processor installed to allow the Windows 10 upgrade install? If anyone knows the answer to ANY or ALL of these, please let me know. Thanks!
once you have upgraded, your key no longer works for the previous edition and is changed to a windows 10 key you can reinstall win 10 fresh AFTER you first upgrade, micrsoft ISO's are available from microsoft and has links on this site not sure about the athlon x2 4200+ but i wouldn't try as my 4400 x2 in an old media PC is really no good for even win 8 basic you can go back to your previous OS within 1 month of upgrade or the licence is lost forever however once you have tied your machine to a win 10 key, when you need to reformat as long as you use a microsoft account you dont need your key again as its tied to the account so you just skip the key input and log in
If you afterwards reformat and do a clean install of win10 you do not need to have a MS account to log into to re-activate. Microsoft recognises your unique hardware identifier allocated to your PC when you did the initial upgrade. I did the upgrade and then replaced my HDD with an SSD and did a clean install all without MS account.
Starting next month after they roll it out(already doable on insider builds)you will be able to clean install 10 using your 7,8,8.1 key to make the procedure a little less hassle to accomplish.
For your first question, even if the files can't be backed up you could always download the image file for free from Microsoft. You can also convert the install.esd file in the sources folder to an image file using the free decrypter tool available or PowerShell.
