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Fix Windows with an in-place upgrade install
Sometimes a Windows installation simply goes off the rails. Menus don’t open properly, icons start moving around the desktop, File Explorer acts up, apps get weird, and so forth. Enough things can go wrong, or turn strange, that it’s important to understand various basic Windows repair strategies.
Over the past decade, one of the chief techniques in my own repair arsenal for Windows 10 and 11 has been what’s sometimes called an “in-place upgrade install” or an “upgrade repair install.” (Spoiler alert! This is absurdly easy to do in Windows 11 version 23H2 and later.)
Before going into the details of how to perform such a maneuver, let’s start with a definition and some explanation.
What is an in-place upgrade install?An in-place upgrade install involves using the Windows OS installer to replace all the operating system files for Windows 10 or 11 on a PC. Basically, you’re using the installer’s setup.exe program to reinstall the same OS back over itself. This leaves user files entirely alone, retains many settings and preferences and, best of all, leaves already-installed apps and applications unchanged. It does, however, overwrite operating system files more or less completely. And in so doing, it often repairs a balky or misbehaving OS and returns it to normal, working condition.
It can take as little as 15 minutes to perform an in-place upgrade install. This maneuver doesn’t require much post-installation cleanup, tweaking, or follow-up activity, either.
Sounds too good to be true — what’s the catch?Indeed, an in-place upgrade install can provide a quick and effective fix for many, many Windows problems and issues. I use this technique regularly, particularly when I notice that a system is starting to misbehave yet proves resistant to basic repair techniques, such as running the system file checker (SFC) or using the deployment image servicing and management (DISM) image cleanup capabilities.
But an in-place upgrade install is not a universal panacea, and it doesn’t work to cure all Windows ills, either. It is particularly powerless to reverse changes to the Windows registry. (That’s one reason why Microsoft advises users to steer clear or take a registry snapshot they can restore later if they must go where angels fear to tread.)
Here are some additional key considerations that determine the suitability of an in-place upgrade install for a Windows installation.
Requirements for an in-place upgrade install- You must be logged into an administrative account to perform an in-place upgrade install.
- Windows 10 or 11 must be running (and keep running) so that you can run the setup.exe installer from inside Windows itself. You cannot run an in-place upgrade install using a bootable Windows installer or when Windows is booted into Safe Mode. (This is what’s called a “clean install,” and if you take this route, it does not save apps, applications, or any settings or preferences.)
- You will need at least 9GB plus whatever disk space Windows is using on the drive where it’s running to perform an in-place upgrade install. That’s because the installer renames the running version to Windows.old and lays down a whole new Windows folder for the upgrade it copies to disk. That extra ~9GB or so is needed for work space during the install process.
- The Windows installer you use must be the same edition (Home, Pro, Education, or Enterprise), the same language (for example, en-US for United States English, en-GB for British English), the same “bittedness” (32- or 64-bit for Windows 10; Windows 11 is 64-bit only), and the same build (or newer) as the Windows image it upgrades and repairs.
Please note further that some cleanup or customization may be required once the in-place upgrade install has completed. You should check all these things, some of which may require some additional time and effort to complete:
- Custom fonts and customized system icons will be absent following an in-place upgrade install. If you want them back, you’ll have to restore them manually.
- Wi-Fi connections may need to be re-established (including providing SSIDs and passwords). Occasionally, networks may change from Private to Public and will have to be reset properly.
- Windows Update will only be current as of the date of the image file used for the in-place upgrade install. All subsequent updates must then be applied from Windows Update to make the new installation completely current.
- By default, Windows turns System Protection off. After an in-place upgrade install, System Protection must be turned on to enable capture and use of restore points if you want them.
- The previous installation’s OS files in the Windows.old folder consume substantial disk space. Once things are working properly, run Disk Cleanup as Administrator to clear out those old files and recover the up to 35GB of disk space they typically consume. (You can see that folder represented in the WizTree disk space analyzer in Figure 1.)
Figure 1: On a Windows 11 test PC, the Windows.old folder (outlined in white at top center) comes in at 34.7GB after an in-place repair install.
Ed Tittel / IDG
Once you’ve chewed through this list and pondered all the potential gotchas, performing an in-place upgrade install is easy — ridiculously so in Windows 11 and straightforward in Windows 10 with the right Windows ISO in hand.
Windows 11: Click one button to perform an in-place upgrade installFor versions 23H2 or later, you need only navigate to Settings > System > Recovery, then click the Reinstall now button next to “Fix problems using Windows Update,” as shown in Figure 2. It uses Windows Update for whatever version of Windows 11 you’ve got installed, matching the base version and installed updates exactly. It’s literally a one-button upgrade option.
Figure 2: Click “Reinstall now” and Windows Update does the rest.
Ed Tittel / IDG
That said, this does take some time: I’ve had it take anywhere from 35 to 110 minutes to complete on various test machines. (Newer PCs with fast CPUs finished faster than older PCs with slower ones.) For that reason, Windows 11 users might wish to use the speedier ISO installation method described next, which also works for Windows 11 versions prior to 23H2 and for Windows 10.
Windows 10 or 11: Perform an in-place upgrade install from an ISO or USB mediaAn ISO, also called an “ISO image,” is a large single file that originally represented the contents of an entire optical disk — a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray Disc. This format is well-suited for installing a large, complex operating system such as Windows because it can bundle up all the programs, files, configuration data and so forth that go into installing such an operating system on a PC.
Windows 10 users can visit Microsoft’s Download Windows 10 page to grab its Media Creation Tool (MCT) for Windows 10. Running the MCT offers an option to build a Windows 10 ISO file. This approach works only for current versions of Windows 10, though. If you need something older (or newer, like a Windows Insider ISO) you may want to turn to HeiDoc.net’s Windows ISO Downloader or UUP dump instead. If you want to grab an ISO for Windows 11, you can head to Microsoft’s Download Windows 11 page or UUP dump.
Remember: the ISO you use to perform the repair install must match the version you’re trying to repair. Your running OS can tell you everything you need to know to pick an ISO for an in-place upgrade repair install. See Windows 10 Forums and Windows 11 Forum for details on how to elicit that info.
Once you’ve got the right ISO, you’ll need to do a little prep work before beginning the in-place upgrade process:
- Be sure to log in to Windows with an administrative account.
- If Windows runs on a drive that’s encrypted, you’ll need to suspend or turn off encryption before performing the in-place upgrade install. After the install completes, you can turn it back on again.
- If the target PC runs UEFI (the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), turn off fast boot and secure boot before starting the in-place upgrade install. Again, you can turn it back on after it’s done.
- Disable or uninstall any third-party antivirus or security software that may be running (anything other than Windows Defender, in other words). Once again, you can reinstall or reenable it once the install is complete.
With that out of the way, running the repair install is dead simple:
- Mount the ISO.
- Navigate to the root of the virtual “CD Drive” into which the ISO’s contents get loaded.
- Run the setup.exe file.
If you’ve got a bootable USB medium (normally a flash drive), you can skip step 1. Open the drive in File Explorer and run setup.exe.
When the Windows installer gets going, accept the license terms, select Upgrade this PC now, allow updates, and click Next. Windows grabs updates, switches over to the installer OS image, and gets itself ready to run. You must then accept the license terms and allow the OS to start the actual in-place upgrade.
By default, the installer keeps all personal files and apps on the target machine. This is what you want, so there’s no need to dig into the “Change what to keep” item on the “Ready to install” page. Just be sure that both “Install Windows 10” (or “Install Windows 11”) and “Keep personal files and apps” are checked on that screen.
As the in-place upgrade runs, the circular progress indicator shows that it’s upgrading Windows, from 1% to 100%. Figure 3 shows the corresponding Windows 10 screencaps; Windows 11 screens are similar but not identical.
Figure 3: The Windows 10 installer prepares to resinstall the OS (top) and then grinds through the initial installation phase prior to the first reboot (bottom).
Ed Tittel / IDG
After that completes, the installer takes you through some additional setup screens where you have the option to customize settings or take the express route to completion. Once that is complete, you’ll sit through a number of colored screens as the installer puts the finishing touches on your in-place Windows 10 or 11 upgrade.
For the vast majority of PCs, it will take less than 20 minutes for this process to complete. Older, slower PCs may take half an hour or more, but that has not been my experience. This means that when an ISO is available, this process goes much faster than the simpler one-button Windows 11 option described in the previous section. I tend to prefer this for my Windows 11 repairs for that reason and because I keep current ISOs around as a matter of habit and choice.
After the installationPlease remember to check the list of items in need of possible attention and effort when the install is finished, as outlined earlier in the story.
By default, Windows keeps the Windows.old folder around for 10 days after such an install. If you’re sure things are working, you can remove it sooner. On the test Windows 11 PC whose Windows.old folder weighed in at just under 35GB in Figure 1, running Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) returned nearly 25GB worth of disk space, as you can see in Figure 4. That process took about 5 minutes to complete.
Figure 4: Disk Cleanup offers to recover 24.4GB on the repaired Windows 11 PC.
Ed Tittel / IDG
A strategy for using Windows in-place upgrade installsKnowing that I can perform an in-place upgrade install quickly and easily has really changed my outlook on Windows troubleshooting. Except for hardware problems (or driver issues, which tie directly into hardware as well), if I find myself spending half an hour troubleshooting a Windows problem, I’m already asking, “Is it time for an in-place upgrade install?” Once that time spent stretches past one hour, there has to be a compelling reason why it’s not a good idea to perform an in-place upgrade install to keep me laboring away at other things.
Simply put, an in-place upgrade install is a great solution for resolving trying or opaque issues with Windows — as long as the target OS is still running well and long enough to run setup.exe through the first of the three or four reboots typical during Windows 10 or 11 installation. If you can make it to the first reboot, the new OS takes over after that anyway, and most problems will be fixed.
Over the past year, I’ve either experienced directly or read about an in-place upgrade install fixing a lengthy laundry list of vexing problems, including these:
- Issues with system fonts, icons, thumbnails, and other presentation matters.
- Networking problems with Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and with misbehaving or absent network interfaces.
- Start and program menu issues, navigation and taskbar problems, and application window issues related to placement and sizing.
- Flaky or erratic behavior from File Explorer, Edge, and UWP apps. Ditto for general OS instability (slow performance, unreliable system utilities, or frequent OS errors).
- Otherwise intractable Windows Update issues (Windows 10 or 11 PCs can’t or won’t download or install updates or feature upgrades).
These days, if a Windows 10 or 11 problem proves hard to diagnose or fix, I’ll turn to an in-place upgrade install as a next or inevitable step in the troubleshooting and repair process. Much of the time, it provides the fix that’s needed. Savvy admins and power users could do worse than give it a try. Cheers!
This article was originally published in March 2018 and updated in November 2024.
The secret to summarizing notifications on Android
At this point, I think it’s safe to say the current wave of “AI everything” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: The vast majority of generative-AI gobbledegook is unreliable, impractical, and more about marketing than any manner of real-world benefit for us — the (alleged) humans meant to be benefiting from it. But here and there amidst all the overhyped hullaballoo, a genuinely useful possibility pops up and peeks its way through the metaphorical curtain.
For some folks, that’s absolutely been the case with the AI-powered summarizing options appearing in apps and services across the tech universe these days. One click, tap, or spoken request — and boom: In a matter of moments, your favorite neighborhood AI genie starts summing up mountains of text and distilling endless-seeming info down into a succinct summary for you.
And if there’s one place where such a feat could be especially intriguing, it’s in our ever-overloaded Android notification panels.
With Apple already embracing the idea in its recently rolled out Apple Intelligence suite (for better or, erm, maybe for worse, in that scenario) and Samsung now supposedly considering something similar for its Android-based Galaxy gadgets, I’ve heard more than a few questions from my fellow Android-appreciating animals about if and how it’d be possible to have notifications automatically summarized here in the land o’ Android.
My friend, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: On Android, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Lemme show ya the secret.
[Psst: Grant yourself even more noteworthy notification powers with my new Android Notification Power-Pack — six smart enhancements that’ll change how you use your phone.]
How to summarize notifications on Android — no waiting requiredIf you want your Android device’s notifications summarized as they stream in — without any waiting for Samsung, Google, or anyone else to make such a feature officially available — a clever little app called Sum Up AI Notification Summary is the little-known key to making it happen.
And yes, ironically, the app’s name could do with some summarization — or at the very least a visit from the Department of Redundancy Department. But that teensy bit of amusement aside, it really is an incredible tool.
And it’s pretty easy to get going on whatever Android device you’re using, no matter who made it or how old it might be.
In fact, you’ve got just three key steps to consider:
Android notification summary step 1: Install and connectFirst things first, install the Sum Up app from the Play Store (obviously — right?!). It’ll cost you a whopping $1.65, up front and in a single one-time payment. And it doesn’t require any disconcerting permissions or collect any form of personal data, as per its Play Store privacy policy.
Now, before we go any further: The app uses Gemini to handle the heavy lifting, and you have to connect it to your Google account before it can access that resource. It sounds complicated on the surface, but I promise you: It really isn’t at all difficult to do — provided you’re in an area where access to Gemini is generally available.
Here’s all there is to it:
- Tap the box at the top of Sum Up’s main screen to get a Google Gemini API key.
- On the screen that comes up next, tap the button labeled “Create API key,” then tap the search box and select “Gemini API” (or any other option, really — it doesn’t actually matter!) in the list that shows up.
- Tap “Create API key in existing project,” then tap the button to copy the key you’ve created.
- Now, head back to the Sum Up app. Tap the “Gemini API key” line there, paste the key you just copied into that field, and tap “OK” to save it.
See? Told ya it wasn’t bad.
And Google won’t charge you a single penny for this privilege, either, within any normal-use scenarios — going all the way up to 15 requests per minute and 1,500 requests per day. (If you’re dealing with more notifications than that, you’ve got bigger fish to fry!)
Android notification summary step 2: Authorize and configureNow that that part’s out of the way, you’ve just got a handful of relatively simple settings to make your way through before sitting back and enjoying your newfound Android notification summarizing powers.
Ready?
- First, within that same main Sum Up setup screen, tap “Grant notification access,” then activate the toggle to allow the app to read and interact with your notifications (for what I hope are obvious reasons).
- Head back to the setup screen and tap “Allow posting notifications,” then tap “Allow” on the prompt that pops up (again, for reasons that should be pretty apparent).
- See the slider labeled “Messages threshold”? I’d slide that up to either two or three, to start. Otherwise, the system will summarize notifications even when there’s only a single message involved — and if you ask me, that isn’t really needed or helpful in any way.
- And last but not least, flip the toggle next to “Retain original notification actions” into the on and active position. That’ll allow options like replying directly to a message or marking something as read to be present and available even on your summarized notifications.
JR Raphael, IDG
And that’s pretty much it! If you want, you can look through the “Per-app settings” option to see which specific apps Sum Up will watch and then summarize notifications from for you. It works with most email and messaging-oriented apps, including Slack, Google Messages, WhatsApp, and Gmail — but if there’s any particular app where you don’t want it to summarize, you can easily uncheck it in that area.
Sum Up lets you select exactly which apps you do — and don’t — want to see notifications summarized for.JR Raphael, IDG
Take a deep breath and treat yourself to a quick crumpet break, if you’re feeling peckish. We’re almost done here — and your Android notification summary machine is basically now up and running.
Android notification summary step 3: Watch and adjustAt this point, all that’s left is to wait and watch as Sum Up works its magic.
I’d suggest keeping a close eye on the summaries for a few days and seeing what seems helpful vs. more annoying than valuable to you. You might find, for instance, that when it comes to regular texts, you prefer seeing every individual message from Google Messages by itself — but you might appreciate the summaries when it comes to notification-heavy work-related Slack conversations.
Each of these notifications took three incoming Slack messages and summarized them into a single skimmable sentence.JR Raphael, IDG
Whatever you decide, the power to make it happen is now firmly in your hands. And that, m’dear, is the power of Android — summed up as succinctly as can be.
Keep the customization coming with my Android Notification Power-Pack — six powerful new enhancements for your phone’s notification panel. It’s completely free!
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