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I am curious. Is there a legal way to upgrade Windows 7 64 bit to windows 8.1 for free ?

Also if there is a way I can do it free or have to purchase it I think I might have a conundrum. My OS drive is a original 60GB Corsair force drive that is not very fast but works fine but I have only a few GB of free space. How much free space do I need to even install windows 8.1 and will it allow all my secondary drives like a few 2tb green drives 2 storing movies I know wont be a problem. It is the 2tb green drive holding many programs/ games and a 320 gb drive also holding games and programs.

I guess another question is will i have to re-install my games and programs after upgrading to 8.1 or will they work.

The main reason for wanting to upgrade is the increased gaming performance 8.1 can deliver. I do not really need it at the moment but I am thinking soon in the future it might be a good idea to have the latest direct-x.

Or insteal of possibly opening a can of worms should I just stick with Win 7 64 for another year since I am not having any problems?

Many thanks again TR Gerbils

There are no legal free paths out there that I have heard about. moving from Windows 7 to 8 was always a cost.

I think your boot drive needs about 20GB free to upgrade so you are likely too tight. The upgrade leaves your windows 7 untouched until the upgrade is completed, hence the reason for a lot of space needed.

For gaming purposes I don't think you'll notice that much of a difference. Boot time and under-the-hood improvements are there, however.

Win7 will continue to work great for gaming for a long time to come. Personally I'd hold off until Microsoft offers some sort of sale or deal on Windows 8/8.1 before purchasing. I see Win8 go on sale every so often at Newegg/TigerDirect for $80, maybe you can catch the next deal. Either that or hold out until the next Windows release, either 8.2 or 9 or something. I would think with the increased pressure from OSX and Android and the focus on app revenue instead of OS revenue, Microsoft gradually make Windows a little cheaper for consumers.

As Arvald mentioned, you also need about 20GB free unless you're ok with a clean install (in which case you should back up your files to one of your other drives first).

vargis14 wrote:

I am curious. Is there a legal way to upgrade Windows 7 64 bit to windows 8.1 for free ?

I don't think you've ever been able to upgrade an OS for free (not counting service pack's).

Sargent Duck wrote:

vargis14 wrote:

I am curious. Is there a legal way to upgrade Windows 7 64 bit to windows 8.1 for free ?

I don't think you've ever been able to upgrade an OS for free (not counting service pack's).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/22/apple- ... ble-today/

Unless you mean Windows and not OS X or pretty much any *nix.

The closest that Win8 ever came to "free" was when Microsoft was offering the Win8 Pro upgrade for $30 back at the Windows 8 launch.

That noted, Any Win7 platform will usually survive an in-place upgrade to WIn8 with all programs intact. Your SSD is another issue. Suggest buying another drive, imaging the old drive to the new one, then run the Win8 upgrade on the new drive. Save the old one for a couple months just in case.

Thanks people...Ill think ill just wait on upgrading until I can get at least a nice 240-256 ssd.

Yeah it would be pretty much impossible to make 20gb of space available on my current drive.

Actually, from what i can surmise from microsofts documentation, there is currently no way to go directly from Win 7 up to 8.1 with applications intact. Only the base Win 8 upgrade will give you that.

I looked into it myself because I was thinking about it, since Win 8 do have some optimization on the CPU side that will make a differince in say battlefield. But reinstalling some 150+ applications will be a pita.
I could go to Win 8, then get the free upgrade to 8.1. Why did'nt I, because the Win 8 license is $300+ while the 8.1 is $125. So at that point I can just as well wait until I get a new comp and do a full base install of 8.1

Here is the document for upgrade paths...
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 03353.aspx

I got my Win8 back when it was $48 or so... The only issue I've had with it was when I ran the 8.1 Beta and loaded 8.1 it required me to reload a lot of stuff. I hadn't heard that you had to do that if you didn't run the Beta. But then again, I wasn't looking for it.
At the time I was running a GTX560 ti and I had a lot of issues with micro-stuttering and such with Win7. When I installed Win8 Battlefield 3 got noticeably smoother, almost like I had upgraded the video card. I don't know if that was due to a better NVidia driver with Win8 or what but is was noticeably smoother. I've since moved up to a GTX660 and BF4 plays great with it.
I really like Win8.1, its very stable and does everything I want it to do.

vargis14 wrote:

The main reason for wanting to upgrade is the increased gaming performance 8.1 can deliver. I do not really need it at the moment but I am thinking soon in the future it might be a good idea to have the latest direct-x.

Score another win from a performance perspective. I upgraded to W8 from 7 without changing any Pc hardware and trust me - the under the hood improvements Microsoft touted about are there. On the rare occasion my Pc is powered down fully, it boots up to desktop/tiles within 8 seconds. If it's in sleep state or hybrid hibernate, it's instant on. Everything is far more responsive too, from browsing, music/video and productivity. Gaming is largely the same for the most part though, but it's more stable than 7 if things go wobbly in a game, so I'm happy - coloured tiles and all...

geekl33tgamer wrote:

vargis14 wrote:

The main reason for wanting to upgrade is the increased gaming performance 8.1 can deliver. I do not really need it at the moment but I am thinking soon in the future it might be a good idea to have the latest direct-x.

Score another win from a performance perspective. I upgraded to W8 from 7 without changing any Pc hardware and trust me - the under the hood improvements Microsoft touted about are there. On the rare occasion my Pc is powered down fully, it boots up to desktop/tiles within 8 seconds. If it's in sleep state or hybrid hibernate, it's instant on. Everything is far more responsive too, from browsing, music/video and productivity. Gaming is largely the same for the most part though, but it's more stable than 7 if things go wobbly in a game, so I'm happy - coloured tiles and all...

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how much faster and more stable W8 is over W7... you aren't going to notice a lot of in-game performance difference, but it handles crashes and alt-tabbing far better than W7 did. I love being able to alt-tab out of a game, do whatever else I need to do, and then alt-tab back into the game and have it resume play almost instantly. You could do that in previous Windows, but it wasn't anywhere near as smooth in my experience.

For the routine OS stuff, the performance gains are far more obvious. Faster boot times, faster opening and switching of apps, etc.

It's worth the update.

cphite wrote:

For the routine OS stuff, the performance gains are far more obvious. Faster boot times, faster opening and switching of apps, etc.

It's worth the update.

It's faster but most won't care or see much point in spending £100 on it after the bad publicity that went with it's launch. I was sceptical too, but seeing as I'm running on very old hardware at the core of my PC (CPU, Mobo and RAM are now 6 years old), I'm taking all the performance I can get!

It's a shame it's perception is what it is, as the performance is very solid as I said above.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

cphite wrote:

For the routine OS stuff, the performance gains are far more obvious. Faster boot times, faster opening and switching of apps, etc.

It's worth the update.

It's faster but most won't care or see much point in spending £100 on it after the bad publicity that went with it's launch. I was sceptical too, but seeing as I'm running on very old hardware at the core of my PC (CPU, Mobo and RAM are now 6 years old), I'm taking all the performance I can get!

It's a shame it's perception is what it is, as the performance is very solid as I said above.

There are still things that irritate me about the GUI but honestly, I've never understood the sheer anger that some people express towards it... and while I do feel that MS was stupid for being so tone-deaf in the beginning, at the end of the day, they produced one hell of a fast and stable OS that just happens to have some GUI things that are annoying. But in the grand scheme, the speed and stability more than make up for that.

And if you find the Modern UI too unsettling, there are dozens of third party apps that make it go away.