I am on Windows 7 and wish to upgrade to Windows 10,
but I do not have enough disk space for the upgrade.
I think that I need to upgrade to Windows 10 through Windows 7,
rather than start from a reformatted hard disk.
The biggest chunk of disk space is taken up by the
winsxs
folder (some files are 6 years old), but the proper way isn't working. I ran Disk Cleanup as an admin, and the selection to clean up Windows Update files still doesn't appear:
I also tried DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded
and got:
Service Pack Cleanup can't proceed: No service pack backup files were found.
The operation completed successfully.
[EDIT] Trying to work out Disk Cleanup still. I have KB2852386 installed:
C:\Users\Zeno>wmic qfe | find "KB2852386"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2852386 WIN7SSD Update
KB2852386 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 12/1/2013
Why is "Windows Update Cleanup" not showing up like it does here?
Best Answer
There’s an easier way to achieve your goal: Obtain a Windows 10 1511 installation medium somewhere and perform a clean installation directly.
Since Windows 10’s November Update (called 1511), it is possible to activate directly using a Windows 7+ Product Key (or Windows 8+ Embedded License). The result is the same: You get a “Digital Entitlement” type activation that is valid for your PC. That means it’ll be automatically picked up whenever you reinstall Windows 10 on the same PC. Details on this procedure, including which types of Product Keys are not eligible for this method, are available at Microsoft.
Apparently, you can enter the “old” Product Key even during Setup, but you could also skip entering the Key there. I used this method once. I skipped entering the Key during Setup.
Prior to the 1511 version you could not activate directly using a non-Windows-10 Product Key, making the whole “upgrade and then clean install” procedure necessary. Because the 1511 update is relatively new, information in the previous state of affairs is more dominant in the Internet.
I also recommend using partition that’s at least 60 GiB for installing Windows.