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Günter Born: Here's why the free upgrade from Win7 to Win10 still works
It's one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry: You can still upgrade from a licensed copy of Win7 to Win10 for free.
The how is easy: Almost everyone can upgrade using the Media Creation Tool. If you're asked for a product key, use the one that came with your copy of Win7 (or 8.1). There are detailed instructions on Microsoft's Answers Forum.
But the why remains a tantalizing unknown. Günter Born has found a possible answer, in a Reddit post from a self-proclaimed Microsoft employee. Short version: The cutoff date was a marketing ploy that was easily bypassed anyway.
Fascinating stuff.
Given that support for Windows 7 ends after January 14, 2020, who would not like to save some money and get a free upgrade?
(Score: 2) by Dale on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:43PM (8 children)
There are reasons why some didn't/won't do the upgrade. Those reasons are still valid. It is also good that it is available for those that want to do it. MS should just allow the upgrade directly from Win7 without having to do the media creation tool at this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:50PM (6 children)
My win 7 license would only allow 16 gb of ram... so I thought about updating to win 10 for that. Instead I just switched to linux.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:19PM (5 children)
You switched from Win7 to Linux. But according to TFA an upgrade to Win10 would have been free.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:31PM (1 child)
Yes, Linux was also free.
I ran a test comparing how long a task would take on win 10 vs linux. When I returned to Linux it had performed as expected, when I returned to Linux my PC had restarted and I lost all my work.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday December 04 2019, @03:50PM
> When I returned to Linux it had performed as expected, when I returned to Linux my PC had restarted and I lost all my work.
The 2nd "Linux" was supposed to be "Windows"?
If so, then you did not follow the instructions that told you to close all files and running applications before opening them. You're supposed to understand that Microsoft owns you and your computer now. I know, you were sick and missed the class that day. Microsoft wants to keep you safe. If your computer is unusable, you're extremely safe. You'll never enter any data, so nothing to lose.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:34PM
Free as in "free beer", no monetary cost up front. But not as in "freedom of controlling your own box, freedom from surveillance and key-logging", which is much more valuable. If you upgrade, you are pledging your fealty to the Dark Lord in the Land of Redmond, where the Black Screens of Death lie (formerly "Blue Screams of Death").
(Score: 5, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:41PM
Free of dollar cost, but not Free.
Anyway, the AC needed "windows 10 or better" - so they naturally went for "better".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday December 04 2019, @10:14AM
Sure, and an upgrade from, say, "not having herpes" to "having herpes" is also usually free, but I'm not going to be taking advantage of either off any time soon.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:56PM
Or wait until MS sends the 7s kill switch disguised as an update.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:39PM (8 children)
It's one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry: You can still upgrade from a licensed copy of Win7 to Win10 for free.
Well, my doctor tells me I can still upgrade from the crabs to full-blow syphillis in 2019 for free if I want to. Yet somehow that doesn't make the proposition anymore appealing...
If you like Win7 on a computer designed to run Win7 (because, you know, it's kind of old...) then you'll be better off installing a decent Win-like desktop Linux distro such as Mint: not only will it run better, it'll come without ads or nagware, and it won't spy on you and phone home.
And if your argument for keeping Windows is gaming or running certain Windows-only apps like SolidWorks, you'll probably be better off buying a new, more powerful machine designed for Win10. Or just leave the damn Win7 machine alone and use it until it dies. Whatever you do, don't "upgrade" your old machine to Win10 if you enjoy life.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:52PM (2 children)
After the first deadline to upgrade from 8.1 to 10 passed, Microsoft still allowed people to download the Win10 iso if they ticked a checkbox saying they were handicapped.
Personally, I'd have preferred to downgrade to XP and at least SimCity Rush Hour would work, unlike Win8x. Making Windows on Windows an extra cost item was not an upgrade. Even Vista didn't pull that crap.
Given a choice between XP64 (which they never put into general availability for intel chips) or Win10, how many would do the switch? Certainly a lot of admins who still have to support do because of custom software (hospital equipment, anyone)?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:12PM (1 child)
Back around 2006, I bought a couple of Atom based "Net-Top" PCs - tiny (for the day), low power draw, and just as "good" as the big workstation boxes from 2001. They came with WinXP, and worked great, until about 2008 when the over-the-air XP updates beat them into a pile of worthless goo. You could re-install WinXP from the CDs that came with them and they'd be all snappy and responsive again, or just re-image them with Ubuntu, also ran great - but, if you want "patched, secure, up-to-date Windows XP" anymore, you can't run it on an Atom processor.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:31AM
Windows XP was really amazing that when it was released, it ran pretty decently on a Pentium III with 256 MB of ram. Which by 2001 standards, wasn't a bad computer. By the end, it was sluggish on a high-end hyper-threading P4 with 2 GB of ram. Your experience with the Atom doesn't surprise me either - even a halfway decent Pentium 4 system beat the snot out of an Atom-based system in terms of performance.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:06PM (2 children)
Or just disable the network card and stay with win7 until they quit making games that run on it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:18PM (1 child)
But I like my Blizzard games (although, I readily admit: StarCraft I is just about as much fun to play as StarCraft II, and so much better for it's lack of internet requirement...)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:36PM
But I like Windows version of Minesweeper... It cheats.
Every day I bet my wife that I won't hit a mine on the first click. I win every time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:11AM
When XP ended their support/upgrade period, I was considering upgrading to Windows 7. Generally the hardware was not new, but it was still well usable with XP and Vista and would fly with Win 7. However, I found that there are some licensing tricks used which I could not accept, mostly related to sending "health reports"* and installing software with updates. I left XP there, which I use even today, and upgraded more powerful machines, including my i7 desktop, to Linux with lightweight but configurable environments (with poor support, as whole environment is maintained by two people, but it is fast, configurable, has no distracting fireworks and eats only around 200MB of RAM with file manager and terminal windows used extensively, and it can look like Windows... 98).
Then I bought a new portable which had Windows 10 equipped. Its welcome wizard gave me Kafkesque condition: I had to accept an agreement with its appendices, but I could not get these appendices because I didn't connect the machine to the Internet. I couldn't connect it to the Internet as the license was not accepted. Read: I had to accept blindly terms critical for my work.
So the 64GB space is divided now. 25GB is for Windows, and is not used at all, only for a few programs which couldn't run on WINE. On the remaining space, there is a Debian, unfortunately with kernel I had to build with patches for the computer and is used every day.
*If you signed any confidentiality agreement or NDA and still use software which sends "health reports", congratulations, it usually sends shreds of memory with your so-confidential work
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 04 2019, @06:33PM
Well good for you. If barbara hudson's journal the other day is any indication there are many people on this very site who would need to pay for that upgrade.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Captival on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:15PM (2 children)
I don't think I've ever seen a more schizophrenic software strategy than Windows 10. Most programs start at full price and get cheaper as they mature, but this is the opposite. It started out free for everybody, then they charge full price later on. Unless you have an old version, then it's still free. Or if you click a checkbox, then it's also free. Or you can just pirate it - they'll nag you constantly, but still let you use it and even give you updates. They seem to want to just give it away permanently, but can't give up all that easy income from preinstalls on new PCs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:27PM
Seems to work for drug dealers.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:47PM
Windows 10 is not an operating system per se. It's a user monitoring system. They're getting money, just not from the users. I suspect they get nice checks from the NSA, and they did get that $10 billion cloud contract with the Pentagon. Anything additional they get from serving ads on the startup screen, and forcing Office users to the subscription model, well the execs need their bonuses don't they.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dltaylor on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:18PM (9 children)
Win 10 is an unmitigated pain in the ass for consumers. Every week I have to help a friend whose Win 10 (from new) laptop has something break. Printers, scanners, applications that she has used for years just stop working. Sometimes a reboot "fixes" the problem, usually when it is a library mismatch with a running application. Other times it requires removing all traces of the offended (that is not a typo) device and reinstalling the drivers and resetting the desired configuration, which is a tedious waste of time and energy.
I have a couple of older Dell laptops. One is dedicated to Linux. The other is for the infrequent "must run Windows". Since the disk is easily removable, I have both a Windows 7 (original) license for it on one disk and a downloaded Windows 10 on another. With an i7 and 8 GiB of RAM, it meets the "low eye candy" requirement for Windows 10, but performance of the disk and network is noticeably slower in Win 10 than Win 7. Personally, I attribute that to the added load of the spyware.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ilsa on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:49PM (6 children)
I gave up and switched my parents to Apple. If you count the value of your time, even their worst Apple Tax made the transition a net positive. I went from weekly (or sometimes a couple times a week) support sessions to bi-monthly. The worst problems I've had to deal with is helping them navigate away from those scam "Your computer is infected!" pop-ups.
I really really wish Linux and the Linux application ecosystem was more polished, or I would move people to that. But it isn't, and at this point I don't think it ever will be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @01:01AM (3 children)
Linux is almost ready... Poettering just has to integrate a desktop into systemd and it'll be done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @02:46AM
Seems like you missed all the GNOME-systemd stuff that arose out of this email [gnome.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @03:50AM (1 child)
I thought he just needed to port emacs into systemd?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @08:10PM
no no, he has to rename systemd *TO* emacs
(Score: 3, Interesting) by toddestan on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:53AM (1 child)
Actually, for people like my Mom, Linux has been ready for quite some time. All she really wants is a platform to run a web browser. Sure, maybe I wouldn't stick her on Slackware, but a distribution like Linux Mint or Ubuntu and point her at Firefox and she'd be good to go.
The biggest problem though is actually Apple, since she has an iPhone and you need shitty fucking iTunes to do anything with it. Though hopefully with any luck her current iPhone will be her last as she is not too keen on the removal of home button, not to mention the eye-watering cost of the latest iPhones.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday December 04 2019, @06:34PM
Yeah, I've been waffling on the same problem. I'd like to move to android, but there are just so many reasons not to.
The complexity of switching all my apps, and figuring out all new ways of doing things is a PITA, but is relatively minor. Play Store is a still a cesspit of malware. Apple isn't perfect but it's dramatically better.
One of the biggest problems is not so much Apple, but literally the rest of the entire freaking industry, and it blows my mind. Everyone thinks that Bluetooth Power Class 2 is sufficient for mobile devices, and it isn't. I almost abandoned bluetooth wholesale as a failed technology until I took a chance on Apple's equipment. Apple is literally the only company I know of that is using Class 1, and the quality difference is night and day. Until someone... ANYone... is willing to make both a phone AND a headset that does Class 1, I'm probably going to be stuck with Apple for the forseeable future.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:37AM (1 child)
The spyware doesn't help, but a lot of that is just laziness. Hard drives are slow enough that it was often worth putting some effort into optimizing disk access so it didn't bog down your software. But give all your developers fancy SSDs, and it doesn't matter anymore, so they don't do it. Which is fine when the users also have SSDs, but for those users that have hard disks the results can be painful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:46PM
Yeah, most people I know don't test on other machines or setups. For example, one of my friends received a complaint from a coop he did the website for that their customers were complaining it was too slow and looked funny. Turns out he never tested it on a smaller screen (let alone the most common 1366 × 768 WXGA size), nor did he test it on the slower DSL or dial-up speeds common in rural areas. Also makes me think how most web designers never run them through accessibility tools or understand the need for semantic elements over randomly named divs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:25PM (6 children)
A few years ago, the complaints I seemed to hear on the intarwebs was that Microsoft forced you to upgrade to Windows 10. Disguised as a minor upgrade.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Would you like to upgrade to Windows 10?
To upgrade to Windows 10 do one of the following:
1. Click the Yes button
2. Click the No button
3. Click the X box to dismiss this window
4. Pull the computer electrical power cord from the outlet, and you will conveniently be upgraded to Windows 10 when you restart.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I mean, the way people described it, sounded like it was impossible to avoid.
Of course, I can imagine that dialog box today:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This computer has has Windows 10 installed.
To restore this computer back to a usable state,
please send 3 bitcoin to Microsoft.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:56AM (4 children)
I read a couple of those horror stories, and went researching. Found a list of IP addresses to block on the router. The wife stopped getting those nags to upgrade. It was a relatively short list - maybe fifteen addresses total. At the same time, I blocked all Windows telemetry addresses used by both Win7 and Win10. IIRC, the whole thing involves less than 30 addresses.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday December 04 2019, @11:15AM (3 children)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @11:47AM
Probably the list from the github windowslies repo
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 04 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
Win7 and 8.1 telemetry here - https://www.ghacks.net/2017/02/11/blocking-telemetry-in-windows-7-and-8-1/ [ghacks.net]
Win10 telemetry here - https://toytheory.com/?p=193 [toytheory.com]
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/disable-windows-10-spying-on-a-router-level/114960 [level1techs.com]
Less effective Windows "hacks", because hacking your Windows machine can be, and has been, bypassed by hardcoding IP addresses into Windows itself - https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows/ [github.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday December 04 2019, @06:01PM
I have never had the nag screen; block the IPs listed in a few of those (I have lists, too, but am not in a position to check them right now) at your network edge.
Don't do it in the host file, unless you want to do it for each machine you get on your network forever more. I blocked stuff on a firewall I use to connect to my ISP, with a few differences so that I didn't block EVERYTHING at the edge--sometimes I have guests or there's a particular update that came out that supports even xp and 2003 that I want to get.
Also, if you have your own DNS server, you can add MS domains to it and just set the hosts in the domain to loopback addresses. I do that for a lot of things, and add things weekly if not every few days.
You don't need anything new or modern to serve DNS, but you might want to ensure you can run DNSSEC in the future to public dns servers you can point to yourself (like the dns root servers rather than say Comcast or Google's dns servers...)
But that might be a long way off before the whole internet is rigged to keep you from looking at your data as it leaves devices managed by corporations securing it from competition rather than for your privacy. (Remember, if you can't look up or inside encrypted dns requests to someone elses server, you have no idea where MS or google or firefox is sending it or even what is in it, because they value your privacy so much you cant see what they are collecting about you...)
Blocking stuff at your firewall or edge also lets you block what MS and google have hard coded into their hardware. Even if you know what to block, you can't always block it on the device sourcing all that traffic you are trying to block--MS and Google specifically permit IP addresses as destinations and do not honor host file changes to block such traffic, so sometimes you really do need a server or router/firewall to act on such requests.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday December 04 2019, @06:04PM
Now that 'click no to agree, X to agree etc' game is played with making Win10 or Win8 use only online user accounts.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:09AM (2 children)
How to stab a fork into your eye.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @03:53AM (1 child)
repeatedly.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:11PM
Soon, how to code your own Nazi AI to do it for you.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by jb on Wednesday December 04 2019, @06:09AM
Anybody who bothers to evaluate return on investment when making a (even a notionally zero-dollar) purchasing decision.
What is the dollar value of signing over access to all of one's private data to one of the least trustworthy companies ever to trade?
Make your own estimate of that value then do the sums and it becomes very clear that even if Microsoft were to pay its victims some substantial amount of real money to install Windows 10 on their computers, accepting the terms of service would still yield a nett loss.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Entropy on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:45PM
My PC isn't about the OS: It's about the applications. The OS should be invisible. Windows 10 is the opposite of that:
- Updates randomly break my programs. My programs are the entire purpose for running the PC.
- Unnecessary interface changes slow down everything.
- Unnecessary and unwanted programs installed on my computer randomly? No thanks.
In short Windows 10 is about Microsoft's needs, not the consumer's needs. If they updated Windows 7 it would be exceptionally popular--but they don't care what consumers actually want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:55PM
... And here I thought that it was because even today, one month before it is end-of-lifed, that Windows 7 still enjoys about 1/3rd market share of those who run Windows. (In other words, Microsoft 10 bombed as a 'replacement' for it, and is still very happy to have those numbers jump).