Early this year, when Microsoft announced that the Windows 10 upgrade would be offered for free for all existing Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, the company also mentioned that they were trying to include all the pirated versions of Windows to upgrade to Windows 10. We already shared the upgrade matrix for Windows 10. Microsoft mentioned that if a user is running the latest version (including service pack) for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, then they will qualify for upgrade via Windows Store, rest of the users will have to download the ISO and upgrade, which is again free.
Now the company has clarified about the upgrade of pirated version of Windows to Windows 10.
So according to the blog post, the upgrade to Windows 10 for pirated versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 will not be free, but upgrade is possible.
While our free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 will not apply to Non-Genuine Windows devices, and as we’ve always done, we will continue to offer Windows 10 to customers running devices in a Non-Genuine state. In addition, in partnership with some of our valued OEM partners, we are planning very attractive Windows 10 upgrade offers for their customers running one of their older devices in a Non-Genuine state.
This actually makes sense since pirated versions haven’t paid any license like genuine versions and hence do not quality for free upgrades. But again a good move by Microsoft in offering upgrade for pirated versions to geniune version of Windows. As of now there is no mention on the pricing for upgrading from pirated version.
On Windows 10, if the version is pirated or Microsoft is not able to verify that Windows is properly installed, licensed, and not tampered with, they create a desktop watermark to notify the user.
