I have a retail Windows 7 Home Premium license, which allows for moving between machines. I upgraded it to Windows 8 and 10 through their respective programs and I could upgrade to 11 if it were to support my PC, but it doesn’t.

So I want to move the license to my newer laptop (13th gen Intel Framework 13). I could install Windows 10 with my Windows 7 key and then upgrade to Windows 11, but unfortunately the laptop doesn’t support 10, not even enough to just install. And Windows 11 doesn’t accept my Windows 7 key.

Any ideas? One thing I considered is booting from USB, attach the system storage to a VM, install Windows 10 there, upgrade to 11 and then reboot into it natively, but maybe there’s a better way.

(I’m not intent on buying a new Windows 11 license, I own a license for 10 that can be moved and upgraded)

Fixed!

This is what I had to do, in the end, to transfer the retail license from my Windows 10 PC to a Windows 11 laptop:

  1. Link the Windows 10 license to my Microsoft account. First my Windows 10 activation status showed “activated with a digital license”, switching to a Microsoft account associated the license with that account, making it show “activated with a digital license connected to your Microsoft account”

  2. Install Windows 11 on the laptop. Choose “I don’t have a product key” during installation.

  3. In the Windows 11 activation settings, use the troubleshooter, select the “I changed my hardware” option. It should spin for a bit and then give an option to show devices to transfer the license from. (This first failed for me with a generic error message, fixed by reinstalling Windows 11)

  4. Choose the old system to transfer the license. (My Windows 10 system wasn’t listed the first time, I had to convert its account to local and then back to an MS account for it to show up)

The old Windows 7 key w/Windows 10 upgrade path was a massive red herring, that option was closed in 2023.