Next Wednesday the preview version of Windows 8.1 will hit a brick wall and stop functioning for anyone still running it on their systems.
Last month Microsoft posted about this upcoming end of the road for the preview and provided a couple of methods to move forward to the final version of Windows 8.1.
- If you installed the Windows 8.1 Preview or Windows RT 8.1 Preview from the Windows Store, you can update to the final release through the Windows Store by following the instructions available here, or by clicking here to initiate the process. Note that you will have to reinstall all of your applications (desktop or modern) after doing this.
- If you installed a volume license version of Windows 8.1 Preview for evaluation purposes, we would recommend that you install a fresh version of Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 8.1 Enterprise for ongoing use. If you have to upgrade an existing machine, you can do so using volume license media. This can be done by manually running SETUP.EXE from the media, or can be automated by running “setup.exe /auto:data”. As with any Preview update, only data and accounts will be migrated; all apps will need to be reinstalled.
I also posted back in July of last year to clarify some of the situations for upgrading to Windows 8.1 depending on whether you used the 8.1 preview or not. Hopefully that will help you get on track for doing your upgrade before the expiration of the preview next week.
Source: Springboard Series Blog and Windows 8.1 Preview to Get the Axe Next Week (Softpedia)
