[Tutorial] How to Reserve and Cancel your Free Windows 10 Upgrade?

Windows 10 is getting good reviews about its performance. On Windows 8.1 and 7, you can still reserve and cancel the upgrade, if you like. I tried the OS, on my system configuration and, till now there are not too many glitches. Though many preview builds were released before the RTM release, the current build was functioning normally as it should. Cortana is a dismay. It cannot recognize my words properly. Things which it cannot understand are automatically redirected to search on Bing.

One of the main reasons you would like to upgrade to Windows 10, is its free pricing and plethora of features. As you know, if you want to buy a new Windows 10 OS, it’d cost you like $120. But if you reserve this free upgrade, it automatically downloads in the background and notifies you when ready.

Even pirates can upgrade to this new version without much hassle. I even found a hack on torrent site, where you can do a clean install and then activate the new version, instead of upgrading. This is better, if you want to save hard-disk space on drives like SSDs. This is because, when you upgrade from 8.1 or 7, a backup folder is created on the 10 drive and takes like 20GB of space.

The Start-Menu is back with a bang and it suits all needs. It is a combination of Tiles, Apps and Programs pinned to the Start. But after installing Office 2013 on it, I found it difficult to locate the default programs.

But why would you cancel the upgrade? One thing you have to understand is that Windows 10 is not only for desktops, laptops and PCs. It’s a One OS for all devices. So if you are on a limited bandwidth and you are paying per GB, the price of the download is 3GB to 6GB. It depends whether you are using the 32bit or 64bit version and the other software you would like to install.

How to Reserve your Windows 10 Upgrade?

This is very simple. As you know only 7 SP1 and 8.1 users can utilize this free upgrade. But some users like Win 7 Enterprise, Win 8/8.1 Enterprise and Windows RT 8/8.1 are excluded from this offer. Your Windows Media Center, if available on your current 7 or 8.1 version, will be removed with this upgrade. For a limited time, Windows DVD Player will be available. After that you have to buy it from the store.

First of all, the “Get Windows 10 App” icon gets installed automatically, if you have automatic updates on. This is part of the KB3035583 update. You will see this icon in the notification tray at the bottom right corner of your screen.

1. Right click the App and click on any of these two options.
   1. Get Windows 10
   2. Check your Upgrade Status.

2. Doing so, the current OS will do a small check whether your current hardware and system configuration meets the system requirements of Windows 10.

3. After that this screen is displayed.

4. Now click the “Reserve your free upgrade” button. Then the process will initiate by contacting the Microsoft servers.5. After the work is complete, you will see that your Windows 10 upgrade is reserved for download.

6. Now click the button that says, “Ok, notify me when ready“. That’s it. You successfully have reserved your Win 10 upgrade. You will get a notification, when the download is complete and ready for install.

This finishes reserving your Windows 10 for free upgrade. But the download does not start immediately. Since this is a huge event, Microsoft is preserving bandwidth and do the upgrade in stages. Most likely USA and Europe users will first get the upgrade. Next, Asia and other countries may get the upgrade. To force the upgrade, there are a few hacks or tweaks you can try here.

My Experience with the Reservation?

I got the “Windows 10 icon” installed by default during the automatic updates installation. So reserving the upgrade was a piece of cake. It just took less than 1 minute to finish the process. But I didn’t get any notification that Windows 10 is downloaded, even after the release. As I’m from India, it may take a little time for this process as I mentioned earlier.

But sometimes, you may not see the “Get Windows 10 App” on your system or it may not have installed. Then you have to try some few fixes, to have it on your current system. This tutorial will help you to force “Windows 10 app” installed on your system. http://techdows.com/2015/06/how-to-enable-get-windows-10-app-icon-windows-7-or-8-1-taskbar.html

How to Cancel the Upgrade?

As I told you before, if you heard bad feedback from your friend about Windows 10 and want to cancel the upgrade, you can. Most likely, users with limited bandwidth, would like to do this. Also many users would think of a clean install, instead of upgrading. For those consumers, direct download links are provided in the above post and you need to have the Windows 8 or 7 product key with you during installation.

But you can skip the product key during installation and activate the “clean install” later.

1. Right click the “Get Windows 10 App” again and click any of the two options, which are mentioned earlier. You will see a familiar screen, that you saw at the end of reserving your free Windows 10 upgrade. But to cancel the upgrade, you have to click the hamburger icon at the top, which looks like 3 small lines drawn.

2. Now you will see another new set of options. In that panel, click on the option that says “View confirmation“.

3. Now you will see another screen, emphasizing that “Your upgrade is reserved“. But you all see “Cancel reservation” button. Click on it.

4. Now you will be shown few more display screens, before you can confirm the “Cancellation“.

But if you are still in doubt, that Windows 10 may be downloaded in the background, you can uninstall the KB3035583 update. For this, you need to go “Windows Update” either using Control Panel or the Charms bar in Windows 8.1. This process is shown in the following images below.

My Experience with Cancellation

Even though I uninstalled the update, it somehow came back. So if you are like me, reluctant to do the upgrade, you can just hide this update. Generally, the KB3035583 update is available as Optional update. So it will not install, until you say so. So when it becomes available again in the list of updates, just hide it.

Till now it didn’t appear in the notification tray again. I’ll update it if it happens to come back again. You can also read this post, if you are having trouble in cancelling your upgrade and remove the Windows 10 update completely from your system. It looks like there is a scheduled task running and a background process for this phenomenon.  http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-7-to-10-gwx-how-to-remove.html

What reviews did you hear about Window 10? Are you interested in reserving or cancelling the upgrade? What made you think to do any of the issues above? Will you install Windows 10 on your mobile? Please let me know in the comments section.