Sometime I feel so stupid!! … but may be some other guy may have the same problem I had 😉

As you probably know, since Windows 8, every user can decide the language of the Operating System where he is logged on a Windows PC: anyway, I suppose for commercial reasons, there are always, for every version, several installation programs, one for each language. Furthermore note that the Enterprise edition  is the only one that cannot be upgraded for free from a previous release … but if you have an MSDN subscription, you can do it for free anyway 😉

Note that, if you are upgrade from one Windows version to a further one, you HAVE TO use the installation program of the new release with the SAME VERSION (e.g. Enterprise) AND LANGUAGE (e.g. Italian) if you don’t want to loose all the installed programs and settings … and possibly have only your personal data preserved. I had already notice that when I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and now, upgrading a PC (as MSDN subscriber) to Windows 10 Enterprise from Windows 8.1 Enterprise (PC upgraded from Windows 7 Italian version), I searched in the MSDN repository the Italian setup version … but only the ENG and ENG -UK versions were listed. I thought: may be, from Windows 8 on – because one can change the S.O. language even at user level – there should be no more the need to upgrade with the same regional language! … and I was wrong!!

What happened, trying to upgrade with the ENG setup, is that the option to “Keep personal files and app” was disabled because “You can’t keep Windows settings, personal files, and apps because you’ve chosen to install Windows 10 using a different language than you’re currently using“.

Keep personal files and apps option disabled

The problem was that I did not realize that only the English version checkbox is checked by default in the left pane!! So only the English versions (ENG and ENG -UK) are listed by default!

Therefore, if you have the same problem, please do the following 😉

Step 1: Log into MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Under Windows, click Windows 10 Enterprise, Version 1511 (Updated Feb 2016) … or anyway the latest version you find!

Step 2: In the language pane, uncheck English:

Step 3: Scroll down, then check Italian:

Step 4: You should see only Italian language versions of Windows 10 Enterprise listed. Click Download.

With that setup file, the upgrade completely maintained on my PC not only the personal data but also the installed programs and configurations!!