Everyone: back up first This is critical.By “back up”, I mean make a complete image backup – a backup image of the entire machine.

Operating systems are incredibly complex. There are hundreds of thousands – maybe millions – of possible combinations of hardware and configurations. Even in the best of worlds, something will go wrong for someone somewhere. Windows 10’s upgrade process has garnered a somewhat negative reputation: it doesn’t always work as it should. In fact, even the tools that tell you whether your machine will run Windows 10 are still occasionally wrong.

If, after upgrading, you find that Windows 10 fails miserably – or it’s just not your cup of tea – you can restore to that backup image.