At the end of the day, Microsoft had four years to close that loophole and never did so if worse came to worse, you could technically go through legal avenues as the EULA for 10 literally doesn't have a clause for this at all. If you try this with 1,000 computers, iffy.

An SMB with 10-200 Windows 7 machines that were OEM licensed don't really matter. As for audits, this mainly is for volume licensing than anything. That old 7 license converts to a 10 digital license and from there you can clean install no problem.

'You still can do this no problem, however careful, do an upgrade keeping everything as if you choose to yeet everything and start fresh, you lose your free upgrade. When upgrading a Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computer with the Media Creation Tool, your older license will be converted to a Windows 10 digital license tied to that device.Īfter upgrading, this digital license allows you to perform a clean install of Windows 10 on the device, continue upgrading to newer versions of Windows 10, and potentially get a free upgrade to future versions of Windows.Īccording to a Reddit user named CokeRobot, who claims to be a Microsoft worker, Windows 10's free upgrade for a year was 'marketing fluff' to maximize the operating system's adoption.ĬokeRobot also shed some light on the now-expired Windows 10 free upgrade offer. This promotion ended in 2017, but a method still exists to upgrade older computers to Windows 10 for free.Īlmost six years later and the latest Windows 10 version 2004 feature update released in May 2020, Microsoft has quietly turned a blind eye to the fact that you can use the Media Creation Tool to upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

When Windows 10 was first released, Microsoft announced a promotion that allowed Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. Note: This article was originally posted on December 1st, 2019, but has since been updated to reflect the current version of Windows 10 and new steps that should be taken to prevent problems with the upgrade.

Do you pay for adding windows to a mac?