Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 7 about a year ago – on January 14, 2020, and the free Windows 10 upgrade program ended on July 29, 2016. However, unofficially, users can still upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10 for free.
Apparently, Microsoft knows this trick, which Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users have used for years to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, but the company prefers to turn a blind eye to it.
And this is not surprising, because as of the end of October 2020, according to NetMarketShare statistics, the share of Windows 7 was still 20.41% against the background of 64.04% for Windows 10 and 9.72% for macOS.
If you go to Microsoft’s website and try to “upgrade” your old desktop or laptop computer, you will have to pay $ 139 in the US and $ 199 in Russia to switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10 Home, which is approximately 15 thousand rubles. The current session.
However, the free method is very simple. User needs to download and run Microsoft’s official media creation tool, then select the option to instantly update PC while preserving files. The Media Creation Tool method does not work on a clean install of Windows 10. That is, you should select the “Update this PC now” option instead of “Create installation media for another computer.”
