PSA: Windows 7 and 8 keys apparently still work for free Windows 10 upgrades

Heard the news? Microsoft has stopped offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade after 12 months of begging aggressive questioning. Except that doesn’t seem to quite be the case.

There are at least two ways to still get Windows 10 for free, provided you have an authentic Windows 7 or 8.1 license.

 First, the Windows 10 upgrade offer hasn’t actually expired if you use assistive technologies like screen readers or on-screen magnifying glasses, and the only authentication the system performs is a button that says “Yes, I use these technologies.” In short, anyone who wants Windows 10 can still get it that way.


Over at ZDNet, however, Mary-Jo Foley has found an alternate-alternate method of downloading Microsoft’s OS that doesn’t require you to lie about your need for a seeing-eye dog, on-screen keyboard, or color blindness. It seems you can still activate Windows 7 and 8.1 keys during the upgrade process.

Note that the upgrade process referred to in the original story is specifically for system keys that were never upgraded or authorized for Windows 10 during the past 12 months.

This statement is, at best, inaccurate  though it’s also not surprising a PR person might not know why a program that was widely advertised as ending on July 29 hadn’t actually ended yet.

If we had to guess, we’d guess that Microsoft hasn’t pulled the switch just yet because it wants to give people a little more time. The alternative is that Microsoft made a very public show of ending the Windows 10 upgrade offer and will pull the GWX.exe tool from systems in a future Windows Update  but doesn’t actually intend to stop giving the OS away.

 It’ll just require a little bit more elbow grease to download as time goes by, or a willingness to claim a disability you may not actually possess.

On a personal note: When I upgraded my own Windows 7 rig to Windows 10, I ran into a problem with my display driver. The upgrade assistant kept insisting that my display was incompatible with Windows 10.

Since I’m running a GTX 970 with the latest Nvidia drivers, I knew that wasn’t true, but couldn’t lock down the problem. I wound up running the installer manually and handled the upgrade that way.