After insisting for years that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows ever, Microsoft changed their mind and released Windows 11 back in October 2021.
As with all new major Windows version releases, I recommended holding off on updating from Windows 10 until Microsoft had a chance to get all the major bugs worked out of the new version.
Well, that time has come. In fact, that time came a good while ago. While Windows will never be completely bug-free, I believe all the most serious bugs have now been squashed.
What’s more, Windows 11’s Windows Update process seems to be a running a lot smoother in recent months. And truth be told, Windows 11’s updates overall have been a bit more stable than they ever were with Windows 10.
I have mentioned several times in my daily Tech Tips Newsletter that it’s now safe to update machines to Windows 11, but I’m still getting questions about it most every day.
But while I truly believe that to be the case, you shouldn’t take it as a rock-solid guarantee that updating from Windows 10 to Windows 11 won’t cause your system to go belly-up. That’s always going to be a possibility when updating from one major Windows version to its successor.
Just suffice it to say I do believe updating to Windows 11 is as safe right now as it will ever be.
And now, a note of caution…
While I believe the vast majority of PCs that are capable of running Windows 11 can now be updated without a hitch, there’s always a chance that yours will be one of the few exceptions.
For that reason I strongly recommend that you create a fresh backup of your current Windows 10 installation before starting the Windows 11 update procedure.
Like they say, better safe than sorry, especially if your hard drive or SSD contains photos and other files that you really don’t want to lose.
Having a backup on hand will make it a lot easier to recover from a catastrophic update failure while also reducing the danger of data loss to something approaching nil.
Of course if there’s nothing on your machine that you really can’t afford to lose you can simply initiate the update procedure with no worries. If things go sideways you can always install Windows 11 from scratch and be done with it.
Bottom line: If you really want to install Windows 11 on your PC there’s really no reason to wait any longer. Go ahead and back up your current Windows installation, then have at it!
Bonus tip: Just because you can (probably) safely update your Windows 10 PC to Windows 11, that doesn’t mean you have to.
Microsoft has committed to supporting Windows 10 with security updates until at least October 14, 2025. That means if you’re happy with Windows 10 you can safely keep right on using it until at least that date.