Hello

I've been having issues getting Windows 11 activated on my new home built PC.

Background

I have an older PC that was built around 2017. It has Windows 10 Home installed, which was originally activated using a Windows 7 Home product key. Since then the license has been linked to my Microsoft account. I used this PC until recently, and it was not eligible for a Windows 11 update since it lacked TPM 2.0.

Current situation

I have now built a new PC and installed Windows 11, expecting to be able to transfer my license to the new hardware. On my old PC the license is, as mentioned before, digital and linked to my account (I have double and triple checked this). I have checked and confirmed that it is a retail license and should thus be transferable. But when I troubleshoot the activation on the new Windows 11 PC and click that I have recently changed my hardware, I get a completely empty list of devices to transfer the license from, even though I have signed in to the same Microsoft account on my new and old PCs. I can also see my old device if I view all devices that are linked to my account, it just does not appear upon activation troubleshoot.

Suggestion from support

I contacted Microsoft support and they claimed that my old PC does not have a true digital transferable licence as it is linked to my old PC. They suggested that I downgrade my new PC to Windows 10, get the license properly transferred and activated and then upgrade back to Windows 11.

I've tried finding other articles or forum posts about transferring a Windows 10 license to a new Windows 11 machine, but they mostly talk about old Windows 10 device to new Windows 10 device or old 11 to new 11, or don't make it clear exactly what kind of transfer they are talking about. Some also claim that transferring a Windows 10 license to a new Windows 11 device is not possible if you did a free upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7/8.

Do you think the suggestion from support holds any water? I'm concerned that they are hoping that my old Windows 7 product key can be used to activate Windows 10 on my new device and then make it possible to upgrade to 11 from there. But Windows 7/8 keys are unusable for activating Windows 10/11 since 2023 from what I understand.

And shouldn't my old Windows 7 product key be irrelevant in this case? I have a retail license that should be transferable, and Microsoft has offered a free upgrade to Windows 11. I just couldn't do it due to my hardware limitations.