Install Windows 8.1

Install Windows 8.1: 

We walk you through the process of upgrading to the latest edition of Windows

The Windows 8.1 update is here, bringing improvements to the Windows 8 interface and new under-the-bonnet features.

All Windows 8 users can upgrade - even if you're running RT, or the 8.1 preview that was released in June - and it only takes a few clicks to install. Depending on the speed of your internet connection, the upgrade will probably take between 30 and 60 minutes to complete. Here's how to install it.

1. Open the Windows Store. You should see a rather conspicuous button, as above. If you're not seeing this button, make sure you've installed all available updates. Note that if you're using the 8.1 Preview, you may need to reinstall your applications after installing the final code via the Windows Store. If you want to avoid this, check out this unofficial way to perform an in-place upgrade.

2. Once you've clicked on the huge Store icon, you'll be taken to a download page. Among other things, this tells you the size of the update for your PC: if you're running a 64-bit desktop edition of Windows, this will probably be upwards of 3.5GB. Updates for Windows RT come in at a little over 2GB. Hit the Download button to kick things off.

3. You can switch away from the Windows Store and carry on using your PC while the update is downloaded and prepared for installation. If you switch back to the Store from time to time you'll see it trundling through various stages of the process.

4. Some time later, Windows will report that it needs to restart to continue the installation. A 15-minute countdown will pop up, giving you a chance to save your work and close down your applications cleanly. When you're ready, restart your PC - or wait for it to restart on its own.

5. Windows will now trundle through several stages of the upgrade process, including setting up device drivers, "getting ready", "applying PC settings" and then, rather airily, "setting up a few more things". On one of our test systems, this last part took a good 15 minutes: we'd guess this might be to do with the large number of applications installed. You might have a quicker experience with a less heavily laden PC.


6. You'll now be confronted with a 14-page licence agreement. "Please read this so you know what you're agreeing to", asks the text at the top. If you click "I don't agree", you'll be given the option of aborting the upgrade and rolling back to your old Windows 8 installation. If you want to finish installing Windows 8.1, you'll have to click the "I accept" button.

7. As with the original Windows 8 installer, you're now prompted to accept Express Settings. If you're eagle-eyed you might notice however that the list of settings is now longer, and includes some new behaviours that you might consider quite intrusive, such as:

• Use Bing to get search suggestions and web results in Windows Search, and let Microsoft use your location and other info to personalise your experiences

• In Internet Explorer, use page prediction to preload pages, which sends your browsing history to Microsoft.

• Let Windows and apps use your name, account picture and advertising ID, and request your location from the Windows Location Platform.

If you don't want to go along with all this, click Customise and step through the options one by one.

8. You'll now be prompted to sign into your Microsoft account - sneakily there's no longer an overt option to use a local account, though you can do this by selecting Create new.

You'll also be asked to verify your identity by providing a security code sent to you via SMS or email (even though Windows 8 knew perfectly well who you are). Lastly, you’ll be asked to authorise SkyDrive to sync your documents. Windows then grinds along for another minute or so, behind a pulsing, multicoloured welcome screen, before the new Start screen comes up. Job done.

9. Now you're happily set up in Windows 8.1, you can reclaim some hard disk space by deleting your old Windows 8 files. To do this, search for and open the Disk Clean-up tool, select the C: drive and click the "Clean up system files button".

Under "Previous Windows Installation(s)" you should see several gigabytes of data than can be safely deleted. If you want to confirm exactly what will be deleted, browse the C:Windows.old folder to see for yourself what Windows has determined is no longer needed.