Pro license good for Home and installation with local account

hsehestedt said:

What's interesting to me is that you can install Home edition after only ever having Pro edition previously licensed. I guess that Microsoft has no problem with you installing a down-level version. I'm not too sure that I see a reason to want to do that, but it is still interesting to know that you can.

You can install any edition you want regardless of what DL's that Device may or may not have. If that edition already has a DL it activates automatically, if it doesn't you need to enter a valid key. And generic keys will not work if there isn't an already preexisting DL for that edition.

Most of my PC's have multiple DL's for every edition except N and KN. Home, Pro, Pro Workstation, Education and Enterprise. All legally activated with My Visual Studio subscription keys (formally MSDN). If I skip entering a key I get the same select an edition menu everybody else gets.
I can also switch editions up and down via change product key. The only exception is once you go up from Home, you can't go back to Home.

NavyLCDR said:

Then I wanted to see if it was true that you could not install Windows 10 Home with a local account. ... When asked to create a user account, there was the usual link for an Offline Account in the lower left corner....

Yes, I'd seen those reports too. I did the same test as you here, but I booted a physical machine from the latest MCT's usb and clean-installed Home. Same result, a local account option bottom left. One conclusion may be that the missing 'local' option is specific to certain OEM's custom OOBE. As we both found, it's not MS who have removed it.

So, apparently, my previous installation of Pro also gave me a license for Home! Then I changed the product key in Home to the generic Windows 10 Pro product key and it upgraded to fully activated Pro.

Now that is a really interesting find. I'll have to try that myself in one of my VMs....


Edit: Confirmed, a VM that only ever had a digital license for W10 Pro activated a clean install of W10 Home.

NavyLCDR said:

I am running a virtual machine under FreeNAS. I originally installed Windows 8.1 Pro on it, activated it with phone activation, then upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. Once that was activated, then I clean installed Windows 10 Pro. All normal with no surprises.

Then I wanted to see if it was true that you could not install Windows 10 Home with a local account. So, I got the most recent Media Creation Tool, created a brand new ISO file from it, and booted my Virtual Machine from the ISO file. I ran diskpart clean and convert gpt commands. Then clicked I Don't Have a Product Key and selected Windows 10 Home from the list.

1. When asked to create a user account, there was the usual link for an Offline Account in the lower left corner. The network for the virtual machine was available, because I did get asked for MS Account info first. When I clicked on Offline Account it took me straight to the box to enter a user name. When installing Windows 10 Pro, there is usually a second nag screen asking if you are sure you don't want to use a MS Account. So....at least on my Virtual Machine, it is still possible to install the latest release version downloaded from MS with just a local account even when installing Windows 10 Home.

2. Now this is where it gets really interesting. I'm logged into Windows 10 Home with a local account on a VM that has never had any version of Windows Home activated on it before. But this first installation of Windows 10 Home is activated with a digital license! So, apparently, my previous installation of Pro also gave me a license for Home! Then I changed the product key in Home to the generic Windows 10 Pro product key and it upgraded to fully activated Pro.

This is bizarre. Just done same with a Hyper-V VM that was setup and activated with PRO, installed Home and it activated!

Never seen that happen before!

Only thing is I cannot 100% say I have not previously activated Home on this VM in past but 99.9% sure I have not.

I have a Pro N vm and I am going to try Home N. I know for certain that VM has never had Home N as I do not even possess a Home N key.

Bree said:

Well, TBH I don't think any of us have even tried it before (I know I hadn't). Maybe the digital licence includes a 'downgrade right' from 10 Pro to 10 Home?

I have tried it in past and it has never activated before.

Just done it with Home N on an activated Pro N vm and it DID NOT activate.

So either MS are discriminating against EU users or @NavyLCDR has discovered an interesting bug. Occam's Razor principle would suggest a bug - lol.