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t’s almost 11 months since Microsoft announced that the Windows 10 free upgrade won’t be available to the existing users of Windows 7 and 8.1 anymore. The ones wanting to upgrade had to purchase a new license key.

However, the users who already switched to Windows 10 during the offer period had the privilege of reinstalling Windows 10 and even roll back to Windows 8.1 or 7 as they had the relevant Windows key.

Now, it’s May 2017 and ZDNet’s Ed Bott has found that Windows 10 free upgrade still works if you have a genuine copy of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 running on your machine. And it doesn’t even require a product key.

How to get Windows 10 Free Upgrade?

In his post, Bott described the process to obtain an activated copy of Windows 10. First, you have to head over to Microsoft’s website and download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

You can go for the Upgrade this PC Now or Create an installation media for another PC option. However, the target machine must be running a genuine Windows version for the method to work.

After you complete the upgrade process by choosing the desired option, head over to Settings > Update & Security > Activation. Chances are that, there, you’ll find that you copy of Windows 10 is already activated using a digital license.

Microsoft ties a digital license to your machine’s hardware. So, you can reinstall Windows 10 in the future without worrying about the activation process.

Bott wrote that he was able to replicate the Windows 10 free upgrade success twice by running activated copies of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on virtual machines.

It’s unclear if this is some technical error allowing users to upgrade for free or Microsoft is secretly running the free upgrade offer. One compelling reason is their goal to achieve 1 billion active devices by 2018.

Remember how Microsoft “promoted” Windows 10 with malware-like upgrade notifications after its launch? These memories, combined with the fact that they have only reached around 400 million active devices until the last announcement made at BUILD 2017, make the assumptions somewhat clearer. At last, all of this would benefit the users.

Please note that Fossbytes hasn’t yet verified the described Windows 10 upgrade method.

If you have something to add or you are able to replicate the method described above, drop your thoughts and feedback.