Microsoft: Win10/11 can no longer be activated using Win7/8 product key

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Alejandro86, Baa Yang, Caicou, Kanata03, slax01 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com Sept. 28, Microsoft recently released a message announcing the closure of free upgrades from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows 11 and 10. This means that users can no longer activate the Windows 10 Placement 11 system during installation using the product key of Windows 7 Plus 8.

Recall that Microsoft launched Windows 10 in 2015 and promised to provide users with free upgrade to Windows 10 within a year, which ended on July 29, 2016. In fact, even after the offer is over, users can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free, but Microsoft has not made it public. Even after the release of Windows 11, the free upgrade channel is still open to anyone with compatible hardware.

Now, according to Microsoft's announcement, this channel has been removed. At the time of this writing, CTOnews.com can still use the Windows 7 product key to activate the Windows 11 version of 22H2, but this method has failed in the latest preview version of the Canary channel, and it is not clear when this upgrade channel will be removed from the stable version of the operating system.

Foreign media DeskModder also pointed out that the method of using KMS to activate batch keys is no longer effective, and Windows can only be activated through Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS).

In addition, according to Reddit, all tools activated by HWID are now invalidated, including but not limited to HWIDGEN, MAS and so on, because Microsoft servers are starting to block such requests, according to Bluedot.

Of course, if a key has been used to activate Windows 10 or 11, it will remain active. In addition, free access to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 remains open.