SOVLED! “The Upgrade Option Isn’t Available If You Start Your Computer Using Windows Installation Media”

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Windows Setup shows you a Compatibility report that says “The upgrade option isn’t available if you start your computer using Windows installation media”? Then there is a good chance that you have used Windows installation media to boot up your computer which prevents OS upgrade. The best solution is to get your computer to boot up using the current operating system. Besides that, depending on the situation, you could opt for a clean installation.

A List Of Suspects

Regarding “The upgrade option isn’t available if you start your computer using Windows installation media”, Windows installation media is usually the number one suspect. For most of the time, it’s possible to boot up Windows computers using installation media in DVD and USB. However, Windows users cannot upgrade the OS of their devices if they use installation media for bootup.

What You Could Do

Boot Up PC Using The Current OS

  • Step 1: Turn off the computer and remove the Windows installation media.
  • Step 2: Boot up the computer normally then insert the installation media.
  • Step 3: Open File Explorer, go to This PC/My Computer and double-click the installation media
  • Step 4: Locate setup.exe, run it and follow onscreen instructions.
  • Step 5: Once prompted “What do you want to do?”, pick Upgrade this PC now. Allow the process to go all the way, accept the License terms and click Install. Proceed to change your settings according to your liking. Last but not least, test out your computer.

Perform A Clean Installation

Note: If you run into “The upgrade option isn’t available if you start your computer using Windows installation media”, it’s highly likely that you already have Windows installation media on hand. However, in the case that you suspect the media to be corrupted, damaged and so on, create a new one:

  • Step 1: Prepare a blank USB or DVD with at least 8GB of storage space.
  • Step 2: Download Media Creation Tool from the official Microsoft website.
  • Step 3: Run the tool and follow onscreen instructions to create Windows installation media.

After you finish, you could perform a clean installation.

  • Step 1: Connect the Windows installation media to your computer.
  • Step 2: Reboot your computer, press the BIOS key (F2 or F12) and select the installation media as the first option.
  • Step 3: Press F10 to reboot.
  • Step 4: As the computer boots up, you should see the Windows Setup menu so select language, time format and other settings according to your liking.
  • Step 5: Click Next > Install now then input your product key. Afterward, Choose Custom and Select the hard drive where you would like to install Windows. Feel free to allocate disk partitions if necessary. Finally, let the process run from start to finish.

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