Upgrade from W7 to W10 For Free

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I have not verified this recently for a Windows 7 switch. However, I do use the method for new W10 installs (I purchase a key separately). Purchased keys can be very cheap. So, one can "hang on to" W7 for no great penalty until the day W10 finally becomes necessary.

Just confirming that this works absolutely fine and thank you for this article link. Although almost every system in my house uses Windows10 (which is excellent btw) - except for an old WinXP laptop (that I am going to keep running XP) - my son's computer needed to be upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The main reason was the ending of steam support for Win7 coming now very soon. I read the article (linked) and did as it instructed and upgraded his fully legitmate Windows 7 to Windows 10. I did this about 5 weeks ago - no issues. I was originally worried because I didn't have immediate access to it's (Win7) serial, but the upgrade program was able to verify that everything was fine and dandy. Worked like a charm. Thank you!

Instructions How To Do It

I've done 2 machines in the last couple of weeks. My own 2nd PC and a friends PC.

I didn't bother with upgrading the current install of Win 7 I just wiped the drives and installed Win 10 from scratch using the Win 7 keys during the instal. Worked just fine on both systems.

The only thing to watch for is during the instal Win 10 will want you to make a Microsoft Account. If you don't want to do that make sure the PC is NOT connected to the internet during the install, you can then install with just the key.
You can connect after the install has completed and carry on with any updates that are needed.

After my motherboard gave up the ghost on 22/12/19 and that I could not get my Win 10 to repair into booting with the new hardware I went the route of a fresh install and used the method above of just using the Win 7 Ultimate key that I have, to hang with paying £212 for Win 10 Pro

New Mobo is ROG Maximus xi Hero, i9 9900k Corsair H80i V2 AIO, corsair 64GB ddr4, 2x Samsun 970 evo M2 1TB , new graphics card was a stretch too far this month so still using GTX760.

So far it has run quite well and runs cooler than the i7 965 I had before with the same cooler, running Star Citizen last night CPU reached 35.9c and the AIO fans spun up to about 1000rpm all cores were running at 4.9GHz but still only achieved 26.9 fps in the game

I think your video card is the problem there Alicatt. I have a GTX970 and to get decent frames and avoid stuttering I have to run in low detail. Even then 60 fps is just a dream but the game still looks great.

Yah think?
yeah it is the bottleneck in the system but it will have to wait

Hey Chucky, I've got a GTX1070 that needs a new home if your interested.

Updated my brother's rig from Windows 7 to 10, so far so good, merged his license key, and didnt have to re-install anything game's wise, all his steam and other games were in tact. got a big performance boost due to new AMD Drivers and DX12 etc