Microsoft continues to kill off support for Windows 7 and 8 by removing the installation path access that allows you to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11. This means that you can no longer use a Windows 7 or 8 key to activate Windows 11–if you still use Windows 7 or 8 at this point, you have no choice but to pay for Windows 11.

While this is sad news for those still using Windows 7, do note that Microsoft offered a free upgrade to Windows 10 from 2015 until July 29, 2016–but retained the installation path that allowed the upgrade to happen for free even if the offer has lapsed already. Do note that this change only affects new installations: if you already used a Windows 7 or 8 key to activate Windows 10 or 11, you are still on the safe side. 

If you are using Windows 10, you can still upgrade to Windows 11 for free. This should make sense since both Windows 10 and 11 have a lot in common.

Going back to Windows 7 and 8 users: given the requirements of Windows 11, it would make more sense to buy a new computer at this point–do remember that Windows 7 debuted 14 years ago, and computers that were launched back then have hardware that’s too old for Windows 11 to support it.