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#21
Well, maybe I was wrong. But, if for some reason upgrading directly from Home to Pro does not work, the method I posted should.
Well, maybe I was wrong. But, if for some reason upgrading directly from Home to Pro does not work, the method I posted should.
I also upgraded Win10 Home to Win10 Pro using a Win7 Pro key, it took maybe 5 minutes (must just be an enablement package). The thing is I originally had two machines, one 7 home (a laptop) and one 7 Pro (a desktop), the desktop died and went to the great recycling centre in the sky , later I upgraded the laptop to Win10 then used my Win7 retail ( I bought for the desktop) box key to see if it would work, and it did. I also replaced the Win10 Home on this current desktop (a replacement for the laptop) with Pro using the same retail 7 Pro key. So in my case it was possible twice and both times was quick and easy, but maybe OEM keys might be a different matter.
We finally got to implement this change today. It worked! Thank you @NavyLCDR!!!
I didn't personally do it. I had to return the laptop before I got the go-ahead to take the plunge. But the guy at the office followed my (your) instructions. At first there was a false start. He said it started to do some stuff and then claimed it needed to connect to the internet. He restarted and it continued upgrading (updating?) to W10Pro. The laptop's W7 Pro key was then input and Windows was happy and activated running W10Pro. And encryption was available too. He had to enable TPM in BIOS first, but I gave him instructions for that too. Surprising that Dell claims they did not ship TPM until 2015 and this was shipped 2014, but yet it was there. Mission accomplished!!!
So I saved them either $200 for a retail W10Pro or $800ish for a new laptop. I will have to make sure they realize that!! I think they finally see the light that refurbs are not always the right choice for a real business and they would have got new this time if it had come down to that.
I found out kinda why it was not activated in the first place. Some local "IT" (definite airquotes) guy set it up after they bought it refurbished. As long as it functioned, I am sure boss could care less that it was not activated if he even knew. Not a technical guy. Probably it was a case of "you get what you pay for".
Dell may mean they didn't ship TPM 2.0 until 2015. I have a Dell Latitude E4310 that shipped in 2010 with TPM 1.2. This seems to be a full list of Dell computers that shipped with TPM.
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...ker#TPM_models