If you purchase a new PC with Windows 10 Home preinstalled,
prepare to be annoyed. This down-market edition (maybe we should call it
Windows for Cheapskates) doesn't have the features you need for getting real
work done: Remote Desktop server access, BitLocker disk encryption, group
policy support, and control over when updates get installed, just for starters.
You could pay $99 for an upgrade, but consider a less
expensive option before you reach your wallet.
Do you have an old product key from Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7
Ultimate, or Windows 8/8.1 Pro lying around? Those keys can be reused to enable
an upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro, potentially saving you the
upgrade fee. You can use a product key from these older Windows versions to
perform a clean install or upgrade to Pro.
In recent versions of
Windows 10, the upgrade from Home to Pro is quick and easy.
It's worth rummaging through your garage, storeroom, or
email archives to see if you can locate one of those old keys. Maybe you still
have a key for one of the heavily discounted upgrades to Windows 8 Pro that
Microsoft offered in the first few months after that product's ill-fated launch
in 2012.
Or perhaps you have a shrink-wrapped retail copy of Windows
7 Professional or Ultimate, where the license associated with the product key
is no longer in use. Best of all, you only need to use the older product key
one time. After you complete the upgrade from Windows 10 Home, the Windows 10
Pro digital license is attached to the specific hardware you just upgraded,
allowing you to reinstall that edition of Windows on that hardware anytime,
without needing a product key.
This scenario worked during the early Windows 10 upgradeprogram. After some testing and multiple reports from independent testers
worldwide, I can confirm that it still succeeds in 2021, more than five years
later. Microsoft first made this option available in Windows 10 version 1511.
Since then, they have simplified the process dramatically. I've been testing
upgrade/activation scenarios on a wide variety of hardware to see how things
work. Here's the scoop.
UPGRADING A NEW PC
FROM HOME TO PRO
You buy a new PC with Windows 10 Home installed by the OEM.
Some vendors offer an upgrade option as part of the purchase, but many PCs sold
in the retail channel are preloaded with a Home edition. 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. x. In either case, the upgrade takes
just a few minutes. Start at Settings > Update & Security >
Activation, where you should see a screen that looks something like this:
The Pro upgrade accepts product keys from older business (Pro/Ultimate) versions of Windows. If you don't have a Pro product key and want to buy one, you can click Go To The Store and purchase the upgrade for $100. Easy.
But if you have a product key for Windows 10 Pro, Windows 7
Professional or Ultimate, or Windows 8/8.1 Pro, there's a less expensive
option: Click the Change Product Key link and enter that 25-character key here.
After entering the
product key, follow the prompts to perform the upgrade.
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.
CLEAN REINSTALL
After successfully performing 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 reinstall Windows, Microsoft's activation servers
will automatically recognize the hardware and activate Windows 10. 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 the setup, as shown below. When prompted, choose Windows
10 Pro as the edition to install.
When the setup was complete, I signed in and checked the
activation status (Settings > Update & Security > Activation). The
system was properly activated because Microsoft's servers recognized the
hardware and used the digital license.
CLEAN REINSTALL, WITH
EDITION UPGRADE
The one gotchas in this series of scenarios come 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
upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. Not surprisingly, using the recovery image gave me
an installation of Windows 10 Home. Don't bother searching for the product key
you used to upgrade if that happens to you. Instead, use Microsoft's generic
product key to force the upgrade.
Go to Settings > Update & Security > Activation
and click Change Product Key. Next, enter the default Windows 10 Pro product
key:
VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
Follow the prompts to upgrade from Home to Pro. Because your hardware already has a digital license for the Pro edition, it will activate automatically. That generic product key isn't magical, of course. If your hardware doesn't already have a Pro license, you'll get an activation error, and you'll need to supply a proper product key or pay for an upgrade
.
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Thanks, For Downloads
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