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Is it still possible to get Windows 10 Home edition free? This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question 0. Report abuse.

Details required :. Cancel Submit. Bill Smithers Volunteer Moderator. For reasonable performance should have at least: 2 gigahertz GHz or faster processor. Dell computers tested for Windows 10 November Update and previous versions of Windows 10 The following Gateway laptops, desktops and tablets have been tested as being suitable to install Windows 10 Creators Update HP Products Tested with Windows 10 Lenovo devices tested for Windows 10 version October Samsung – Find out if your system runs Windows This could also be the case if you took advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade offer on a PC running a Home edition of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

In either case, the upgrade takes just a few minutes. You’ll see a succession of progress screens and your system will restart. After the upgrade completes, you should see a Success notification. Check the Activation screen again to confirm that you’re now running Windows 10 Pro.

After you’ve successfully performed a Home-to-Pro upgrade, you can file that product key away. Your upgrade is now a digital license, attached to your unique hardware. If you perform a reinstallation of Windows, Microsoft’s activation servers will recognize the hardware and activate Windows 10 automatically.

I have tested this scenario multiple times on hardware that originally shipped with Windows Home and was upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. After the upgrade was complete, I used a bootable USB flash drive containing Windows 10 setup files to reinstall a clean copy of Windows 10 Pro, skipping the option to enter a product key as part of setup, as shown below. When prompted, be sure to choose Windows 10 Pro as the edition to install.

The system was properly activated, because Microsoft’s servers recognized the hardware and used the digital license. Looking for technical information about Windows 10 releases, new features, known issues, troubleshooting, and tech support? Start here. The one gotcha in this series of scenarios comes when you have a system that includes digital licenses for both Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. In that scenario, you can inadvertently restore Windows 10 Home. This happened recently when I used a recovery image to reinstall Windows 10 on a Surface Pro PC that had originally shipped with Windows 10 Home and had been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro.

Not surprisingly, using the recovery image gave me an installation of Windows 10 Home. If that happens to you, don’t bother searching for the product key you used to upgrade. The easiest but most expensive way to get Windows is to buy your key directly from Microsoft. You can get these either as downloads or on USB drives.

If you have an old Windows key you can carry over from a previous build, that’s your best option and effectively gives you Windows 10 or Windows 11 for free. If you don’t have a key on hand, you need to decide whether you’re comfortable using an unactivated version of Windows 10 or 11, which limits your customization options, has an ugly watermark and leaves you ineligible for Microsoft support. Many would argue that downloading Windows without paying for or already owning a product key is ethically wrong.

That said, Microsoft has made this process easier over various Windows iterations and lessened the limitations and nagging that happens when you don’t activate.

We’ve even seen well-known vendors and Microsoft partners do press presentations with watermarks on their desktop. Tom’s Hardware Tom’s Hardware. Avram Piltch. More about software. Topics Software.

See all comments I bought a key on ebay and it turned out to be a VL key volume. Which works but shouldn’t be sold. I contacted the seller and he refunded me. Very good breakdown of the ways to activate Windows Most people don’t even realize you can still use a windows 7 key to activate, only after you get into windows, and not during the setup process.

I believe this will probably stop working Jan 1, , when Microsoft stops support for windows 7. One thing that I was hoping for some explanation on key activations, I have seen how some Youtuber’s have tied their windows 10 keys to their Microsoft account. Then they only need a handfull of keys, like one for each motherboard vendor, and during setup, then sign into their Microsoft account, and select the key that corresponds to the motherboard their are reviewing.

So they can move the keys around, and as long as it was the same brand of motherboard it would activate for that computer, and no longer be active on the old system. Any thoughts on how this works?

Windows 10 home purchase free

 
Want to get Windows 10? There are two ways to get Windows A short quiz will help you decide whether to buy Windows 10 to install on your current PC. Need an OS for your PC build? Microsoft charges a whopping $ for Windows 11 or 10 Home. Here’s how to get Windows free or at least cheap.

How to Get Windows 11 or Windows 10 for Free (or Under $20) | Tom’s Hardware

 
 
Shelling out $ for Windows 10 Home or $ for Windows 10 Pro feels rough when Linux is free, since that much cash is easily a third of a. As you can guess, it is very much possible to still upgrade and get Windows 10 for free in You just need to follow our methods covered. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to pay the Windows 10 Home license fee or, if your system is older than 4 years, you might want to buy a new one.