If you don’t fancy upgrading Magento 1 through command line, you can upgrade Magento core using Magento’s in-built Magento Connect Downloader.

  • Load yoursite.com/downloader.
  • Login with a user who has full Magento permissions.
  • Make sure to click the “Clear all sessions after successful install or upgrade” option before proceeding.
  • Click the Check for Upgardes button
  • This will load all the packages with upgrade options beside them.
  • Find the package name Mage_All_Latest
  • In the dropdown choose the most recent version of Mage_All_Latest
  • Use the checkbox beside it to include it in the upgrade
  • Click Commit Changes

If you login and don’t see any packages, this may be due to the way the site was built.

At the top of Magento connect downloader enter magento-core/Mage_All_Latest  in the in put box, this will install all latest MagentoConnect core packages on top of existing files and will allow future upgrades through Magento Connect Downloader.