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Retail licenses of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 can still upgrade to Windows 10

If you purposely missed the upgrade window for Windows 10, on your totally legit Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 machine, and now you are regretting the decision because Windows 10 is really the only way to go to keep your PC up-to-date, then there might be a little light at the end of the tunnel. It turns out, Microsoft is still accepting Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 keys when installing Windows 10.

Back in January, we learned that there are still a few ways to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. Now this week thanks to some investigating by the folks over at Bleeping Computer, we now know that retail Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 licenses can still be used to activate Windows 10 when performing a fresh install, even after the recent Creators Update.

While Microsoft had been annoyingly adamant about the exclusion of users who missed out on the original update window for Windows 10 (up to mid-2016), it seems it is continuing to accept free upgraders, albeit in an underhanded way.

This, obviously, does not mean that in the future Microsoft won't bar this kind of use of the license keys, but so far it's working and enabling users to move on to Windows 10.

KitGuru Says: Now that Windows 10 has matured a bit, and you have had a taste of what it does (and doesn't) do, you can easily pick up a cheap Windows 7+ license and do a fresh install on that creaking PC. What's been your experience with this kind of loopholes? Have you found some of your own?

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8 comments

  1. of course it is..

    All windows 7, 8.x and 10 keys are all stored in the same WGA data base… its how they were able to do the free upgrade in the first place… and there almost zero way to separate the keys out of the data base,,

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  6. In my opinion, they should leave this upgrade path open indefinitely.

    While I like Windows 10 and recommend people to move to it, I still think it was wrong for Microsoft to force Windows 10 on it’s users during the official free upgrade period.

    People will upgrade at their own pace when they’re ready to and don’t appreciate the pressure of feeling like “upgrade by July 29th 2016 or die” type of aggression Microsoft was trying do. Windows 7 support ends January 2020 and Windows 8.1 ends January 2023. By leaving Windows 10 a free upgrade indefinitely, people will still be able to continue running a supported Windows with security updates and won’t have to pay money on their otherwise working older computer not worth putting money into.

  7. well they have to now.. theres no way to seprate the (keys) form Win7/8.x and 10 since there all in the same data base/pool in the WGA servers..

  8. Well, even then, Microsoft probably doesn’t care at this point since since it would be in their best interest for it’s users to forfeit their older Windows versions for Windows 10. Besides, most consumers that bought a computer preloaded with whatever version of Windows never bothered to pay for additional upgrades because of the hassle (to average people) and that it’s too expensive to put over $100 into an upgraded license for an older computer when new computers preloaded with the latest version aren’t much more expensive now.

    Microsoft isn’t losing money if people do free upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.x to 10 because of that above reason and that less and less support resources are tied to older Windows versions as less and less users are actively using it anymore (despite the end of life dates for Windows 7 and 8.1). Their ideal situation is to make the Windows userbase as least fragmented as possible and like I said, they were still wrong to force Windows 10 when it was the official free upgrade period.