Upgrade Win 7 Home Premium to Win 10 fails.

philetus · 08 Jun 2018

I gave up on upgrading Win 7 and clean installed Win 10 1607 build 14393, put in my Win 7 key and upgraded Win 10 to the latest version. Everything is good.

eLPuSHeR · 08 Jun 2018

Why using such an old build? Latest w10 is v1803 [17134.81]

Megahertz · 08 Jun 2018

I think @philetus ended doing the right thing. He did a clean install instead of a upgrade.

philetus · 08 Jun 2018

I used 1607 because I read that it was the version that would let you activate Win 10 with a Win 7 key and I wasn't sure if newer versions would allow it. I had to download a ISO anyway. The upgrade to the newest was easy.

ThrashZone · 08 Jun 2018

Hi,
Well even if that were true about 1607 you should now be able to clean install 1709 or 1803.

alphanumeric · 08 Jun 2018

Yeah, once you get a Digital License you can install any build you want and it should activate no problem.

Porthos · 08 Jun 2018

I have had no issues installing 1803 and using a Windows 7 key to activate, Did 1 yesterday.

alphanumeric · 08 Jun 2018

Thanks for that Info. The "free" upgrade was to officially end long ago. Looks like unofficially its still doable. Looks like they want every body on Windows 10 any how any way, lol.

Superfly · 08 Jun 2018

alphanumeric said:

Thanks for that Info. The "free" upgrade was to officially end long ago. Looks like unofficially its still doable. Looks like they want every body on Windows 10 any how any way, lol.

Yep... LOL

Weird tho' is that new Win 10 retail is quite expensive...yet if you are on Win7/8 it's all good... MS wants the Win 7 guys to come over really badly... methinks.

See here Win 7 seems to be tracking Win 10 - not sure why the dip in 02/2018 then recovered now again to 02/2018 levels (Win 8.1 is holding against XP... LOL)

Bree · 08 Jun 2018

philetus said:

I used 1607 because I read that it was the version that would let you activate Win 10 with a Win 7 key....

1511 (build 10586) was actually the first version to allow that (a feature MS introduced by popular demand). All subsequent versions should do so as well. 1607 (build 14393) added the ability to link your digital licence to your MS account.

Starting in Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10565 and TH2 Build 10568:
Device activation improvements: Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys....

...Starting with Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14371, you can link your Microsoft account to the Windows 10 digital license (formerly called digital entitlement) on your device....

Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First