How to Reserve Your Free Windows 10 Upgrade on Windows 7 Without the Notification Too

Starting this week, Microsoft is showing Windows 10 upgrade notifications on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 with the help of a dedicated tool deployed on all these computers via Windows Update, but it’s no secret that many users find these warnings annoying and try to remove them.

Fortunately, if you’re on Windows 7 and you want to reserve your free copy of Windows 10 but don’t want to use the notification tool that Microsoft always keeps running in System Tray, there’s an alternative to the classic solution that involves Windows Update.

If you’re already on Windows 7 and you are running a fully up-to-date copy of the operating system, the next time you launch Windows Update, you should see a notification that Windows 10 will launch soon and a small button that allows you to reserve your upgrade (if your computer qualifies for the free upgrade).

So just go over to the following path:

Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Update

And as @winObs writes, you should see the Windows 10 upgrade reservation option. Once you click it, a new message appears, telling you that “we’ll let you known when the upgrade is ready to be installed on this PC.”
Download taking place in the background

Windows 10 will be released on July 29, and on that day, the installer should start on all computers that reserved the free upgrade.

How’s that possible? Microsoft will be running a background download process of the necessary Windows 10 files between the date you reserve your upgrade and the July 29 release date, so everything you’ll need to deploy the new operating system will already be there when it comes out.

Needless to say, make sure you keep around 3 GB of storage space free for Windows 10 files to make sure that everything works as expected.