At least for now, though, it seems like this change will only apply to future Windows versions. We were able to activate a fresh Windows 11 Pro 22H2 install with a Windows 8 Pro product key as of ...

Microsoft has stopped allowing users to activate Windows 11 and 10 installations with Windows 7 and 8 product keys. This is because they have stopped supporting these older operating systems.

The hack which many have taken advantage of, using Windows 7/8's old product keys to install the latest OS including Windows 10 and 11 is now gone, as Microsoft enforced a new directive for this.

Microsoft originally announced the changes to block Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys from Windows 11 late last month, but at the time, we saw that keys were still activating, and it wasn’t clear ...