Attempt to upgrade from W10 Home to W10 Pro failure

I bought the disc after i was informed by the CSA that the digital license I had couldn't be transferred to my new laptop after the old one died an unfortunate death. And yes, the disc should have been able to do the install but would not offer the Pro option - it kept offering what I already have, which is home.

You can move digital licenses from computer to computer, the CSA rep did not know what they were talking about, which is very common:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/20530

but yet here i am a week later and still have not been able to install Pro on this laptop and Home sucks

mattyew said:

I bought the disc after i was informed by the CSA that the digital license I had couldn't be transferred to my new laptop after the old one died an unfortunate death. And yes, the disc should have been able to do the install but would not offer the Pro option - it kept offering what I already have, which is home.

Setup from the install disc will read the embedded key from the bios and install the edition it applies to, Home in your case. You should then be able to upgrade that Home to Pro by changing the product key to the Pro key that came with your disc.

Change Product Key in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

Bree said:

Setup from the install disc will read the embedded key from the bios and install the edition it applies to, Home in your case. You should then be able to upgrade that Home to Pro by changing the product key to the Pro key that came with your disc.

Change Product Key in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

hawkman said:

Try this tutorial instead, option 5

Upgrade Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro | Windows 10 Tutorials

NO re-install required

Home and Pro are part and parcel of the same download, higher versions are not on the same Iso as they used to be on 7


Roy

Changing the product key is not going to work for @mattyew unless:
1. It is a RETAIL Product Key and
2. It is not blocked from automatic internet activation.

Now, if @mattyew has purchased a Windows 10 Pro DISC as in a DVD, then it is not a retail Windows 10 Pro, it is an OEM System Builder's Windows 10 edition. The reason is that Microsoft does not sell retail Windows 10 on DVD's, retail Windows 10 is available from Microsoft only on USB flash drives. Therefore, attempting to upgrade Windows 10 Home to Pro using the product key that came with the DVD will fail. Just like upgrading using the generic Windows 10 Pro product key VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T will fail.

If @mattyew absolutely must upgrade the Windows 10 Home that they have to Windows 10 Pro, using what they have available to them, they must do a clean install of Windows 10 Pro (from a USB flash drive with the ei.cfg file added in post #15). The clean install can be done on an empty partition of the same hard drive (SSD) that the Windows 10 Home is installed on - the existing partition must be shrunk by about 40GB and a new partition created. The clean install of Windows 10 Pro can be activated either with the OEM product key that came with the DVD, or it should be able to be activated using the activation troubleshooter if the previous computer was attached to a Microsoft Account:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/20530

Once the clean install of Windows 10 Pro is activated, a digital license for Windows 10 Pro will be established for that computer and then the previously existing Windows 10 Home can be upgrading by simply changing the product key to the generic Pro product key of VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T.