Win7 to Win10 upgrade without service pack 1

I'm trying to help my father upgrade his computer from win7 to win10, but service pack 1 in windows update keeps failing. I tried downloading and running the separate application for installing the service pack, but that fails as well. I even found another microsoft application that claims that it can prepare your system to accept the service pack 1, but that fails as well. (Despite all this, windows runs normally in all other respects that I have noticed). So it looks like updating to windows 10 using windows update is not going to happen.

My plan now is to use the media creation tool to download the .iso, burn that to a disk, and boot to it. Will that allow me to install windows 10, or is it still going to insist that I need service pack 1?

If that won't work, are there any other methods I could use?

Thanks
~Paul

You don't need service pack 1 to upgrade to Windows 10 using a DVD, USB flash drive or ISO file. It is only required to get it to show up in Windows update. The alternative method is a clean install:
Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 blog

Thanks very much for the useful reply!
~Paul

You don't need service pack 1 to upgrade to Windows 10 using a DVD, USB flash drive or ISO file. It is only required to get it to show up in Windows update. The alternative method is a clean install:
Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 blog

Ok ... I guess I'm still somewhat confused. I've now copied the windows 10 iso file to a usb stick using Rufus. On booting to it and selecting windows 10 home I see the option for an upgrade vs. a clean install. Using this iso, do I have to do the clean install? Actually what we wanted was to upgrade to windows 10 with the programs we already have installed under win7. For this option is says to remove the installation media, and reboot the computer, and then re-insert the installation media and restart the upgrade. It is not clear exactly what it wants me to do, but I rebooted normally as it said, reinserted the USB stick and clicked on "setup" on the USB stick. It started the win10 installation procedure but then said "we are having trouble determining if your computer can be upgraded to windows 10" (Is this because of the old service pack 1 missing problem?) Then all of the sudden it says that it is now downloading windows 10 (slowly) I don't know why it is downloading windows 10 if I already have it on the USB stick.

Do I have to punt and just do a clean install of windows 10? That will be painful since we have many programs to reinstall, but if that is the only way I perhaps we will have to. I have already spent many hours and some quite heroic efforts to install service pack 1, but evidently it is very picky about systems that it will do this on. I simply can't get it to install.

Boot into Windows 7. Insert the USB flash drive like you were going to copy files to or from it. Run setup.exe from the flash drive from inside Windows 7. Do not boot from the USB flash drive.

Boot into Windows 7. Insert the USB flash drive like you were going to copy files to or from it. Run setup.exe from the flash drive from inside Windows 7. Do not boot from the USB flash drive.

Thanks for your reply NavyLCDR but I think you didn't quite finish reading my post. In fact I had written that I did exactly what you just told me to do (quoted). As I had mentioned, the response from setup when I did this was: "we are having trouble determining if your computer can be upgraded to windows 10".

Then it started downloading windows 10 all over again (which doesn't make sense since it is already on the USB stick) and of course that ultimately failed as well. So I'm trying to figure out what options I have left for installing windows 10.

Thanks
~Paul

Sorry, you are correct. Whatever issue was giving you problems installing Windows 7 SP1 is probably interfering with the Windows 10 upgrade too.

Maybe try an in place repair install of Windows 7?

Maybe try an in place repair install of Windows 7?

From what I have read, one needs a retail windows 7 product key to do that. However this is an OEM windows 7 installation (from Gateway), so I do not believe that option is open to me.

~Paul

If you have a COA sticker with a product key printed on it, you can do a repair install. Here is a procedure where you can obtain Windows 7 ISO files to make an installation USB flash drive/DVD from:

Windows 7 / 8.1 / 10 ISO Official Direct Download Links from Microsoft Tech Bench - Tech Journey

You do an in place repair install the same way you do an upgrade - insert the DVD/USB flash drive with the operating system running and run setup.exe from it (it's just this time it is the same OS "upgrading" itself).