Microsoft runs a promotion currently on systems running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 that advertises the free upgrade to the soon to be released Windows 10 operating system.

Windows 10, which will be released for PC and tablet devices in less than two months, is provided as a free upgrade for most Windows systems.

The upgrade notification is only displayed in the operating system's system tray area if certain updates are installed on the computer.

While that is the only requirement, the functionality seems broken on some systems as the icon would not display on them even if all prerequisites are met.

This was the case for one of my Windows 7 Professional test systems for instance. I double-checked to make sure all updates were installed but the icon would not show up no matter what I tried.

Why reserve?

Since Windows 10 is provided as a free upgrade, there is only one reason to reserve the upgrade using the "Get Windows 10" notification: the pre-loading of the installation files.

If you want to upgrade to Windows 10 the day it is released by Microsoft, you will benefit from pre-loading installation files as servers may overload on the day due to users rushing to upgrade to the new free operating system.

If you can wait, a day, week or months, then there is no reason to reserve Windows 10.

Fixing the display issue

Several methods have been published in the last couple of days that supposedly fix the issue so that the Windows 10 upgrade reservation offer is displayed on PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8.

First thing you may want to do is make sure that all necessary updates are installed on the system. Once you have done that, you may want to run one method after the other to see if the issue is fixed.

While you can do so manually, you may instead run a small batch script on Windows that does so semi-automatically.

The script is available on Dropbox and all you have to do is download it to your system, extract the archive and run the file win10fix_full.bat afterwards with elevated rights. You do that by right-clicking on it and selecting the "run as administrator" option.

Update: If you receive a 500 error on Dropbox, use the following local download link instead: win10fix_full.zip

Note: Cautious users may want to check the code in a text editor before they run the script. There they will find listed the commands used by the batch file that determine whether all required updates are installed and run commands that attempt to fix the missing icon issue.

First thing you do is tap on (1) which runs an update status check. This checks if all required updates are installed on the system.

If that is the case, try methods (2), (3) and then (4) one after the other to display the upgrade icon in the system tray area.

The batch script explains each method on run so that you know what it supposedly does. The second method (Quick Method #2) fixed the issue on the Windows 7 PC that I experienced it on (it launches the GWX task and refreshes the GWX config afterwards.

Summary Article Name How to display the Windows 10 upgrade icon if it is not visible Description Find out how to display the Windows 10 upgrade reservation offer on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 systems if the icon is not displayed automatically. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo

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