@guyinpv said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
One week ago (8/25/16) I did an upgrade to Win10 and was able to get it free.
Basically the customer had used the free upgrade tool (you know, the annoying system tray icon thingy) but instead of upgrading he had it create the install media and put it on USB stick.
Well last week I took his USB stick and did a clean install, formatting the drive. Of course it was not activated, and I did not put in a key during install.
Lo and behold, we went to the activation and stuck his Win7 key in there and it accepted it and activated digital entitlement! I was quite surprised.
Two possible reasons:
Microsoft has really not fully shut down the free program.
Creating the install media DURING the free period somehow allows it to still activate when used later.
If you happen to have install media created from the upgrade tool, it could be gold!
I wouldn't call it not shutting down the program, it's just not actively blocking it.... Yet. They might, they might not. But any activations now are not officially supported or guaranteed. You are just lucky. But might be lucky forever. But it's at their mercy.