A Comfortable Windows 7 User's Guide to Upgrading to Windows 10 (2021 Guide)

Hello everyone, this is David again, and today I'll be going over an often requested video, which is upgrading to Windows 10 from a Windows 7 user's perspective. This will give you an idea what to expect when you go from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Now obviously the end of lifecycle for Windows 7 is finally here at 2020, and you'll need to upgrade. So whether you want to or not, it's kind of something you have to do. So I'm gonna make the following assumption about you right now: you don't want to change much, you just want to go from 7 to 10 as smoothly as possible, and you're afraid of the changes. That's okay, you're not the only one. So I'm gonna walk you through some of the differences, what you can expect, and how you can make things a little bit more like Windows 7. So first of all, we're going to talk about the appearance differences. So on the bottom left, you'll see this new Start bar. Um, or should I say Start button. It will look different obviously, but it performs essentially the same way. It just looks a bit different. Now what you'll probably see on your screen will be more akin to something like this. You'll have a series of tiles on the right here. There will be some pre-installed apps. I would recommend getting rid of them. So for example, if you want to right-click something and select uninstall on anything you do not recognize, I would recommend going that route. And then for everything else I would simply unpin it. And after you've unpinned every single tile on the right, you can actually click and drag this edge just like this. And now you have this sleek, minimalist Start menu just like it was in Windows 7. Yes, it looks a bit different, but it's essentially just a list of every program you have installed. So don't worry about that too much. As long as you follow those steps, it will be very similar to Windows 7. The second thing you might notice is this Type Here to Search search bar in the taskbar, which obviously was not present in Windows 7. So what I would do in this case is I would right-click it, I would go to Search, and I would either select Show Search Icon or I would select Hidden. If you select Show Search Icon, it's still accessible and you can still search your files or whatever you'd like to do if you want to try this out, but it doesn't take nearly as much taskbar space and it looks a bit cleaner. But if you're a tried and true Windows 7 user and you really don't want it at all, you can select Hidden from this menu. There you go, now it's gone. The other thing I want to bring your attention to is this Action Center icon on the right. Now Action Center was present in Windows 7, although it was a bit different. Now they've treated it more like a modern smartphone in the sense that it kind of keeps track of your notifications on the right here. Now it's useful in some capacities, but if you're not used to this, and again you want the more Windows 7 approach, you can actually disable these notifications. By right-clicking this icon, selecting Focus Assist, and selecting either Priority Only or Alarms Only. I'm gonna select Alarms Only. That means no notification will pop up on my screen unless they are an alarm that I specifically set. The chances are good that you probably have not set any alarms on your Windows computer. The next thing I want to draw your attention to is this idea of the new settings interface in Windows 10. Now, if you think about Windows 7, you might think about Control Panel if you wanted to adjust some of your settings. Control Panel still does exist in Windows 10, although they've kind of tried to bury it in some ways. I'll give you a very brief example here. On the right, if you click the speakers icon to change the volume like you would in Windows 7, you can see it looks a bit different. Now obviously a volume slider is a volume slider, so just because it's horizontally inclined instead of vertical, it's effectively the same. But this gives you an idea of how they're taking a new approach on settings. So if you want to change a setting, like you want to change your desktop background, or you want to do something like that, what I would encourage you to do is click this Start button and then click this gear icon, which is labeled Settings. And after you do that, you're presented with this new menu. It's very unfamiliar, I understand that, but just— I would encourage you just to explore it and just become familiar with the new way that Windows is handling settings. And really, if you dig deep enough, you can actually restore some Windows 7 interface. It's kind of interesting. So on the right here it says Sound Control Panel, it's kind of hidden away on this right menu. If you click that, you're actually getting the old Windows 7 sound options from then. So in some cases you are able to go back to the old interface, but they definitely tried to bury it. So I would encourage you to utilize the new settings and then utilize this search option. So if you want to change something about your mouse, type in mouse and see what options come come up. I would just liberally use this search feature because it is very intuitive, and although it's probably not what you're used to, it'll be helpful in the long run. Another example of this I want to show you is that Windows handles default applications a bit differently in Windows 10. So for example, you might want to use Google Chrome as your default browser. So what I would do is I would open up Settings like we did earlier, type in the word default until you select Default Apps. Now on here will show you all the applications that it's assigned the default actions. And on here, I've selected Google Chrome, but the default might be some— look something like this because they want to push their Edge browser, or it might look like something like this. So if you want to change it to Google Chrome, all you have to do is make sure you have Google Chrome installed. And if that's the browser used in Windows 7 and you upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, the chances are good that you have it installed. All you have to do is make sure you have the right web browser selected on this new menu to make sure any link you click opens up in the browser that you want it to open in. By the way, that reminds me, if you want to shut off your computer, this is the power off button. You'll click this and you'll select shut down. It's very similar to Windows 7, although it does look a bit different. So that's, that's really the biggest, the biggest things I can think of about the differences. Windows 10 is actually very similar to Windows 7, assuming that everything you want to do in Windows 7 you plan on doing in Windows 10. You should, by and large, be able to do those things. So with that out of the way, you're ready to purchase Windows 10. What I recommend is either Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro. I think for most users watching this video, Windows 10 Home will be just fine. So once you're ready, purchase it through the website digitally. You'll get a product key, and I would definitely write down this product key in case you reinstall Windows or you need proof of your purchase or something like that. And install it from there and follow the steps. Now we're into the phase of installing Windows 10. So just follow the prompts. By and large, you want to be asked a series of questions. And again, we're operating under an assumption that you want it to be as similar to Windows 7 as possible. So as you're installing Windows 10, it might say, would you like to enable Cortana? Would you like to enable personalized data? Would you— all these options. I would turn all of them off. Off because you don't really need them if you're a Windows 7 user and you're expecting a Windows 7-like experience. Now, after you upgrade to Windows 10, your system might be a little bit slower than before depending on how you installed it. If you do a clean install, which is generally for more advanced users, your computer might be faster. But if you go from a system upgrade from Windows 7 to 10, it might be a tad slower. And I've actually made a video on how to make Windows 10 as efficient And as bloat-free as possible, which is generally for more advanced users, but if you want to give it a go, I recommend watching it. I've linked it in the description, and I've linked it at the end of this video if you'd like to watch it. So hopefully I've alleviated some of your concerns about upgrading to Windows 10. I personally feel Windows 10 is a great operating system, and I don't think Windows 7 users will have much to worry about in the transition. So if you got value out of this video, I would appreciate you leaving a like or subscribing to this channel. And leaving a comment if you have something to say. Thank you as always, and I hope you have a great day.