The big day is nearly upon us, and whether you like it or not, you need to take action! What am I talking about? Windows 11, of course. October 14, 2025, is when support for Windows 10 will end, unless you purchase an Extended Security Update (ESU), of course.
Windows 11 is where Microsoft wants users to go, and it is where I have been forced to go! Windows 10 has been nagging me for months, but today is the day that I have to take action. So let's go through the steps you need to take to upgrade your copy of Windows 10 to the latest version of Windows 11.
How to Upgrade From Windows 10 to Windows 11
1. From the start menu, click on Settings.
2. Select Update and Security
3. Click on the Windows 11 “Download and Install” button. This is the banner that has been nagging me for many months.
4. Accept and Install the software license terms.
5. Sit back with a beverage and wait for the download and install to complete. This took around 1 hour 15 minutes for me and there were multiple restarts.
How to do a fresh install of Windows 11
You may wish to perform a fresh install of Windows 11. For this, you will need a copy of the Windows 11 ISO image and a spare 8GB USB flash drive.
If you wish, you can use the Windows 11 Installation Assistant to check that your PC meets the requirements for Windows 11. If not, you can easily bypass them. My preferred means is to download a fresh Windows 11 ISO and boot directly from that.
Ensure that you have backed up before moving forward. This will completely erase the data on your SSD / HDD.
1. Download and install a copy of Rufus, a tool to write bootable USB sticks.
2. Go to the official Windows 11 page and in the Download Windows 11 Disk Image section, select Windows 11 (multi-edition for x64 device) from the dropdown menu.
3. Select your preferred language.
4. Click on Download and wait for the process to finish. The disk image is around 7.2GB in size.
5. Insert the USB flashdrive and then open Rufus.
6. Select the USB flash drive.
7. Select the Windows 11 ISO image.
8. Click on Start to write the image.
9. If prompted to tweak the install (no TPM, RAM requirement check, local account) decide on what you would like to tweak and then click OK.
10. Wait for Rufus to write the image to the USB flash drive.
11. Click Close and then eject the flash drive.
12. Reboot your PC and select the USB flash drive as the boot device. The process to do this will be different for every user.
13. Follow the Windows 11 install process and in a short while you will have Windows 11 on your PC.
