How to deal with Windows 7 Upgrade error 0x80072f8f – 0x20000 – TLDR; Enable TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2

Microsoft improved their business a lot and they are still offering a free Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade. This is wonderful news for outdated PCs that have a valid Windows license.

The link to download is here:

https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10

You could also just download the ISO:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

Caveats

Windows doesn’t support all kinds of older TLS protocols anymore, so you might run into various problems, e.g.:

 0x80072f8f - 0x20000

The way to go to get around this problem temporary is to re-nable TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2. This will also fix Outlook 365 from starting up properly.

Save this using notepad with an extension .reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\WinHttp]
"DefaultSecureProtocols"=dword:00000a00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\WinHttp]
"DefaultSecureProtocols"=dword:00000a00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.1\Client]
"DisabledByDefault"=dword:00000000
"Enabled"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client]
"DisabledByDefault"=dword:00000000
"Enabled"=dword:00000001

Now right click and open that file.

Older versions of TLS is enabled again and you can continue to try and upgrade your computer.

Reference

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