Microsoft Quietly Kills Free Windows 10/11 Upgrades from Windows 7/8 (UPDATED)

Microsoft quietly announced that it has stopped supporting free upgrades from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows 10 or 11.

“Microsoft’s free upgrade offer for Windows 10/11 ended July 29, 2016,” a post, or whatever it is, to Microsoft’s Device Partner Center site, whatever that is, reads. “The installation path to obtain the Windows 7 / 8 free upgrade is now removed as well. Upgrades to Windows 11 from Windows 10 are still free.”

Microsoft also notes that “to upgrade to Windows 11, devices must meet the Windows 11 minimum system requirements.” Which it then doesn’t link to. (You can find that information here.) Fortunately, those requirements haven’t changed in a while, and are not changing for Windows 11 version 23H2. Microsoft confirms this in a separate post—this time to its Tech Community website—noting that there are no changes to the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) requirements and that the “Microsoft Windows 11 Client family version 22H2” certification will continue unchanged for 23H2.

OK, so what does all this mean?

In the build-up to Windows 10, Microsoft announced that it would allow users on Windows 7 and 8.x to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, and as the post quoted above notes, that this offer would expire in July 2016. (That post says that this offer included Windows 11, which is not technically true as that release didn’t arrive until late 2021. Whatever.) But Microsoft silently continued to allow those free upgrades, and when it finally arrived, they worked with Windows 11 as well.

But it’s a bit more nuanced than this. In addition to supporting literally in-place upgrades from Windows 7 and 8.x, Windows 10 and 11 have both also supported activating clean installs of the operating systems using what’s called a retail product key for Windows 7 or 8.x. And so those with such keys—including those once handed out to members of Microsoft’s now-defunct MSDN and TechNet programs—have been able to clean install Windows 10 and 11 for years without paying for a new key. And new keys can be expensive.

I have been using my own collection of MSDN/TechNet Windows 7/8.x product keys to activate Windows 10 and 11 installs in VMs and elsewhere for a long time, and so I have routinely confirmed that this free upgrade policy has continued well past the announced July 2016 expiration date. And now I will have to test this again, as it’s not 100 percent clear if this sudden policy change, which happened without any prior announcement, impacts this ability as well. My guess is that it does.

But I will find out today. And report back here.

UPDATE:

I still have a few more scenarios to test, but this change does mean that we will no longer be able to use Windows 7/8.x retail product keys, including those you may have gotten from MSDN/TechNET … eventually. That is, of today, still process still works in the most current stable, shipping version of Windows 11. But when I tested this with the newest Windows 11 Insider Preview build in the Canary channel, it did not work. 

I will test this against the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channel builds as well in an attempt to figure out roughly when this policy change will be implemented. But even if these come up working, it doesn’t mean that this change can’t come to those channels, and then to stable, at literally any time in the future. So the important point is just that this change will impact retail keys at some point. Maybe very soon. Maybe not. Ah well.

UPDATE #2:

I have tested this against Windows 11 stable (with Moment 4) and the latest Release Preview build, which now self-reports as version 23H2. And the Windows 7/8.x product key still work in both.