Question upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10

[Turbonium]

I have an OEM copy of Windows 7 Pro on a system, and want to upgrade it to Windows 10 Pro, through Microsoft, without paying.

How does one do this nowadays? Is it just a matter of using my Windows 7 Pro key when installing Windows 10 Pro (I'm assuming this is the same thing as the "loophole" that's all over the Internet)?

 

[Shmee]

Good to hear it activated just fine. Though it is too late now, you could have also used the same USB to do an upgrade install instead of a fresh one. Basically the steps to do this are to launch the setup.exe in the USB drive while in Windows 7, select the options you want, and the OS will upgrade from there. Of course there are many good reasons for wanting to do a clean install instead.

Now that it is done, I wouldn't worry. And as rule of thumb, at least I have seen this for some time, Windows 10 is very forgiving with activation and will generally accept windows 7 and windows 8 product keys. Also, if a motherboard previously had Windows 10 activated on it, it will receive an entitlement for Windows 10 attached to that exact board, and this will allow it to activate Windows 10 again without any product key if the OS is reinstalled.

 

[bononos]

You should give it a try and see if it still works. I remembered there was another loophole by using the assistive technologies option to get the upgrade but that got closed after some time.

Windows 10 free upgrade loophole still works – will Microsoft ever close it?

Get it while you can

www.techradar.com

 

[Turbonium]

I used my Windows 7 Pro key when doing a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro, and it worked.

The thing is, for whatever reason, I couldn't get my system to boot off my Windows 10 Pro disc, so I resorted to a bootable USB (which I created via the Windows 10 media creation tool, which I found by googling). The thing is, I've never installed an OS off a USB drive before, let alone one I created myself using provided tools. Thus, I'm paranoid that the whole install is compromised (not because I don't trust Microsoft's tool, but because I'm worried that I overlooked something when creating the bootable USB drive, and accidentally used a tampered with file).

I honestly don't know if I'm being too paranoid or not, but is there any way to verify my install as being 100% Microsoft legitimate? (I already checked the validation status in Settings, and also did the slmgr /xpr command in Command Prompt, both of which yielded results indicating it's legitimate. But still, are there other ways?)

(To be clear: my fear is that I created the bootable USB with a fake Microsoft exe without noticing, even though I'm pretty sure I downloaded the tool directly off the Microsoft website).

To be perfectly honest, I'm tempted to redo the install using the disc.

 

[mikeymikec]

Personally, if I downloaded the Win10 image from Microsoft (e.g. Media Creation tool) on a machine I considered to be safe, I'd consider the resulting installation to be safe.

Do you have any reason to suspect otherwise? The thing is, there's not much you can do for a guarantee of safe-ness.

 

[Turbonium]

Personally, if I downloaded the Win10 image from Microsoft (e.g. Media Creation tool) on a machine I considered to be safe, I'd consider the resulting installation to be safe.

Do you have any reason to suspect otherwise? The thing is, there's not much you can do for a guarantee of safe-ness.

Not really, other than an overabundance of caution.

It's just that if I use the disc, that's basically a "guarantee of safe-ness" right there.

 

[JWMiddleton]

I had a Dell OptiPlex that had a sticker on it with an activation code. I installed Win 10 and it would NOT activate.

So, I download Win 7 Pro from Dell and installed it without issues using the code. I then logged into Microsoft and did an upgrade to Win 10 Pro and it worked as a digital activation, no code needed. I used a thumb drive for the install that I created on my newer desktop.

John

 

[mikeymikec]

I had a Dell OptiPlex that had a sticker on it with an activation code. I installed Win 10 and it would NOT activate.

In the Win7 era it was really common in my experience for big-name OEM product keys to not activate via the Internet and I'd have to ring the Microsoft activation line to get it sorted.