ei.cfg doesn't work for upgrade in place from Windows 7

Hi all, been beating my head against the wall for 3 days on this. This is one of two Windows 10 upgrade problems that I have.

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 7559 that came pre-installed with Windows 10 and the key embedded in the Bios. Specifically, ShowKey Plus Releases . Superfly-Inc/ShowKeyPlus . GitHub shows the OEM key and edition as:
Original Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
Original Edition: Win 10 RTM Core OEM : DM
EULA Type: OEM

I wiped the machine and installed Windows 7 Professional instead, which is fully activated and fully updated as of yesterday with a legal, paid-for OEM key, but now I want to upgrade to Windows 10 Professional.

I downloaded MediaCreationTool1909.exe from Microsoft, created the ISO, burned it to a 16GB usb key using Rufus and tried to upgrade by executing setup while logged on as Administrator in the Windows 7 installation. I am getting the dreaded "You can't keep Windows settings, personal files, and apps because you're installing an edition of Windows that's different than the one you're currently using".

Once I figured out that the key embedded in the BIOS was causing this, I created and stored in the <USB key drive>\sources directory a ei.cfg file which looks like this:
[EditionID]
Professional
[Channel]
Retail

I also tried any number of other combinations based on various forum posts, such as
[EditionID]
[Channel]
_Default

In all cases, the setup ignores the ei.cfg, does not give me a menu to choose, goes right to the "Choose what to keep" with the "apps, files and settings" greyed out and the "can't keep" message.

SetupDiag says:
SetupDiag: processing rule: FindAbruptDownlevelFailure.
.....
Error: SetupDiag reports abrupt down-level failure.
Last Operation: Finalize
Error: 0xC1900205 - 0x4000B
LogEntry: 2019-12-24 11:05:24, Error MOUPG CDlpActionCompat::ExecuteMigChoiceScan(1658): Result = 0xC1900205

Refer to "https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/Debug/system-error-codes" for error information.

SetupDiag found 1 matching issue.
---------------------------------

What is errorcode 0xC1900205? I can't find documentation for this anywhere. I could, I guess, let it install the OEM version since I don't much care about whether I need to re-install or not, but I want Windows 10 Professional as I should be able to get.

Why doesn't this work? Any help at all would be most appreciated as I am dead in the water here.

Thanks in advance

Hello and thank you for replying to my post. I had thought I had explained myself clearly: I did exactly everything that is in this tutorial up to the point of not seeing the "Ready To Install". As I explained, it seems that my OEM key is preventing me from keeping everything and I want to make the upgrade setup use the ei.cfg to give me the opportunity to enter in my Windows 7 key but it is ignored.

I perhaps should have made sure that I stated taht I also tried by executing only the MediaCreationTool itself while logged on as Administrator as well as running it from the USB key.

This won't work until I can get it to not read the OEM key and I thought I could use ei.cfg but this doesn't work for me.

According to this post: ei.cfg question, "The ei.cfg simply prevents Windows setup from automatically trying to install the same version of Windows that originally shipped on an OEM machine. Instead, it will pause at a menu allowing you to choose the edition of Windows that you want to install." but this is not happening for me.

patricktapia said:

...tried to upgrade by executing setup while logged on as Administrator in the Windows 7 installation. I am getting the dreaded "You can't keep Windows settings, personal files, and apps because you're installing an edition of Windows that's different than the one you're currently using".

That is not likely to be anything to do with the embedded W10 Home key. The message "..you're installing an edition of Windows that's different than the one you're currently using" usually means you are trying to upgrade with a version of Windows 10 that is in a different language from the Windows 7 that is currently installed.

For example, you'll get that message if you try to upgrade an English install with the 'English International' ISO ('English' = US English, 'English International' = GB English, they count as different languages).

Hi and thanks both for your replies.

Once it has finished installing Windows 10 Home because of the embedded key, you can easily use the method in the tutorial below to just change the product key, and enter the Windows 10 Pro key to quickly update to Pro.

So "RTM" means "Home"? I was considering doing just this to get past my sticking point, but this would mean that all my apps would be zapped and, while I stated that I was ok with this, I would rather not have to have this happen if I can avoid it, and I should be able to install just fine.

trying to upgrade with a version of Windows 10 that is in a different language from the Windows 7 that is currently installed.

Everything is US English.

patricktapia said:

So "RTM" means "Home"?

No, RTM means Released To Market, it just means that it is the current version, not an Insider preview. Windows 10 Home is described by Microsoft as the CORE edition.

Everything is US English.

Which Setup.exe are you running? There are two, one in the root of the ISO and another in the Sources folder. To start an in-place upgrade of W7 to W10 you must run the one in the root of the install media.

Thanks for the reply. I have always used only the one in the root of the media.

My big question here is why the ei.cfg is being completely ignored. I should get at least an error message or some other feedback that it is even looking at it, but nothing.