URGENT: Windows 10 upgrade issue

My brother just called me while I was at work, sounding pretty stressed. He’s using an old Microsoft laptop running Windows 7, but when he powered it up this morning, Windows update suddenly kicked in out of nowhere. It started "configuring files for Windows 10 installation," and once that finished, he was hit with a blue screen stating the "Windows 10 upgrade" was underway. There isn't a single option to hit > or stop the process.

He has some incredibly important documents on that machine, so what should his next move be? Is it safe to perform a hard shutdown by holding down the power button?

I'd really appreciate some quick advice on this.

I’d suggest letting the upgrade run its full course—otherwise, they might just end up making a mess of things and finding themselves completely stuck later on. When you're upgrading to Windows 10, the prompts clearly state that your files aren't going to be deleted, so once the Windows 10 installation wraps up, I’m pretty confident all their files will still be right where they left them.

Just a heads-up for anyone looking to roll back to Windows 7 after an upgrade: you can navigate to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Recovery, and the system will walk you through the rest. Generally speaking, you have a 30-day window following the upgrade to revert everything back to how it was. Also, for those of you who find it absolutely infuriating that Windows 10 insists on downloading itself even when you've specifically disabled updates—yes, I know the feeling—there is actually a rather handy little tool that works on both Windows 7 and 8.1 to stop that madness in its tracks.
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Thomas Wells5 said:Just a heads-up for anyone looking to roll back to Windows 7 after an upgrade: you can navigate to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Recovery, and the system will walk you through the rest. Generally speaking, you have a 30-day window following the upgrade to revert everything back to how it was. Also, for those of you who find it absolutely infuriating that Windows 10 insists on downloading itself even when you've specifically disabled updates—yes, I know the feeling—there is actually a rather handy little tool that works on both Windows 7 and 8.1 to stop that madness in its tracks.
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

It’s not working. At least not for me. It keeps claiming the files have been deleted.
Look, I’m probably the idiot here. I installed App never10, so it’s either that causing the mess or the system just wiped everything during the jump from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
I've got this win.old folder, but it’s useless. Even when I boot up my laptop, I tried running the recovery options to roll back to yesterday—since the version from two days ago was even older—but nothing works. It just won't trigger.

I'll probably just move everything over to an external drive, wipe the machine, and then hunt down some decent Windows 7 machines to see if I can get a mediocre performance out of Windows 10.
Everything’s been crashing ever since that auto-install kicked in. Just my luck. 😠

Honestly, you're better off just doing a clean install of Windows 10, especially since you already have an original key from the upgrade.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 - you can grab the ISO right here.
https://rufus.akeo.ie/ - this tool will help you make the bootable USB.

All you really need is a USB drive.