At the time when Microsoft released windows 10, they also gave great chance to its predecessor i.e windows 7 & 8,8.1 users to freely update their operating system to the latest version of Microsoft Windows 10. As the bad adoption of Windows 8 on users still cursed the company, Microsoft wanted their users to try it’s latest OS the windows 10 which will not disappoint like windows 8 did.
For Microsoft to make all of Thier customer to use their latest OS they used a strategy in which Microsoft said that for all those who are using windows 7 or 8.1 can freely update their OS to Windows 10 free for the first year. Microsoft said, customers running genuine Windows 7 and 8.1 can upgrade their operating system to latest version windows 10 and it was limited to the first year of release of Windows 10.
By these moves Microsoft wanted all of their customers to use its latest version of operating system despite using old and hope that in the next two years there would be 1 billion devices using windows 10 but that goal was not achieved despite of Microsoft great free offer. Also the Microsoft original license was upgraded to digital license in the process.
Almost 2 year ago, I tried to update Microsoft Windows 7 and that still worked and updated to Windows 10 without any Issues.
After almost 5 years the release of Windows 10 today I tried to test the windows update and I was amazed that it’s still possible to update Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 provided that it uses genuine license.
Upgrade to Windows 10 for free
Incase if you want to update your previous version of windows to Windows 10 and make use of still existing offer here is guide how you can update to Windows 10 for free.
- Firstly you must make sure that you are using genuine version of windows. Then goto Control Panel > System and Security > System> now scroll down and you should see the activation status.
- The 2nd and most importantly you should backup all of your data before the update as to be safe and keep your data safe from losing incase if things go wrong. For backup you can use Windows own recovery options or if you don’t trust it then you can use Paragon Backup & Recovery Free or alternatives like Macrium Reflect.
- Now that you have backup all of your data now download the windows 10 media tool creation from their official website.
- Now that you have downloaded the tool now install and open it and follow the procedure as shown on the screen. This process will take a while as the entire system needs to be downloaded and installed.
- If the upgrade worked then boot into windows 10 and the first thing you will do is to check the activation status by going to Settings > Update & Security > Activation.
- First if you can see the activation button then press it and the activation must automatic and normal and windows will now be activated with digital license linked to your Microsoft account.
- If the activation is not successful then it will give option to manually enter your product ID.
- To verify if everything worked as planned please use this guide on checking out if Windows 10 is activated.
The users of Windows 7 especially must use the free upgrade option to extend the official support for system.
