Where’s My Windows 10 Upgrade Icon?

Many of you have written concerned that you don’t have that little upgrade icon for Windows 10 in the lower right corner of your Windows PC.

So what’s going on? There could be several possibilities, so let’s run down the list.

It could be that your device doesn’t have the latest Windows updates. You need to have updated to Windows 8.1 and have all current updates. Windows 7 must have Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installed as well as the latest Microsoft updates.

For Windows 7 SP1:

KB3035583

KB2952664

For Windows 8.1 Update:

KB3035583

KB2976978

Try running both critical and optional updates and installing them. There’s a good chance you’ll see the icon then.

You’ll only see an upgrade option for Windows 7 Home and Pro and Windows 8 Home and Pro versions. If you’re running an Enterprise edition, there won’t be a free upgrade. Also, if you’re running Windows RT, there’s no upgrade.

Is your device part of a school or business network that’s managed by administrator? You’ll have to check with the IT administrator about upgrades.

If Microsoft thinks your PC might not be able to run Windows 10, you won’t see the get Windows 10 app before July 29. They’ll enable the app after that date.

There’s also a possibility that you aren’t running a genuine version of Windows. The upgrade will only apply to genuine Windows versions.

If none of the above apply to you, Microsoft does offer a fix, but it’s a complicated one that I’m going to copy verbatim from their support site.  I do not suggest trying this unless you are very comfortable with technology and doing something like editing your registry.

1. Open Notepad
2. Copy the following text and paste it into Notepad:

REG QUERY “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\UpgradeExperienceIndicators” /v UpgEx | findstr UpgEx

if “%errorlevel%” == “0” GOTO RunGWX

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Appraiser” /v UtcOnetimeSend /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

schtasks /run /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience\Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser”

:CompatCheckRunning

schtasks /query /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience\Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser”

schtasks /query /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience\Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser” | findstr Ready

if NOT “%errorlevel%” == “0” ping localhost >nul &goto :CompatCheckRunning

:RunGWX

schtasks /run /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Setup\gwx\refreshgwxconfig”

1. Click File, and then Save As
2. In the File name box, change the file name to ReserveWin10.cmd
3. Then click the dropdown next to Save as type, and select All files (*.*)
4. Select the folder you would like to save the file to.  For this example, let’s choose to save the file to the C:/Temp folder.  Then click Save.
5. Open an elevated command prompt.  (From the Start screen or Start menu, type Command Prompt in the search box, and then in the list of results, right-click Command Prompt, and select Run as administrator.)
6. Finally, run the file from the location you saved to in Step 6.  In this example, you would type the following in the Command Prompt window and hit Enter:C:/Temp/ReserveWin10.cmd

The Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser can take 10 – 30 minutes to run, during which the script will continuously provide status reports that it is running.  Please be patient.

If the script is failing in an infinite loop, then you don’t have the necessary prerequisite Windows Updates.

Hopefully one of these will work for you.

~ Cynthia