Microsoft Ends Activating Windows 10 With Windows 7 And Windows 8 Product Keys

According to a recent announcement by Microsoft, older Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys will no longer activate Windows 10 or Windows 11 . However, if you have already activated an older install of Windows 10 with your Windows 7 product key, you should be fine.

It’s been a loophole that allowed people to activate their Windows 10 and Windows 11 with Win7 and Win8 product keys. Most PCs that were already running Windows 10 could upgrade to Windows 11 with no problem. Any machine that was older than Windows 10 usually was not compatible with Windows 11 due to the BIOS configuration. Microsoft has not given any reason as to why they shut the server down on their system for the activation keys.

This will indeed make it much harder for people to buy and sell computers knowing that the units can no longer be activated with Win7 and Win8 product keys. Product keys will now have to be bought to activate Windows 10 on older PCs. If you are sticking with Windows 10 machines only you should be fine.

PC’s that have been upgraded to Windows 10 after the announcement if there should be an issue where reinstall of Windows 10 is needed it should activate based off of Microsoft keeping a digital fingerprint of the unit from the previous installs.