New
#1
"Upgrading" unlicensed (!) Windows Home to Windows Pro
I am looking at a co-worker's hand-me-down company laptop to see if I could add encryption which is now required for our business. (The boss got the new laptop, the admin gets his old one!).
First thing I see is that display has a permanent watermark "Need Windows Activation". Oh my! A little digging and I see that's not as bad as first thought. Some limitations, but it functions and updates just fine. Next thing I see is that it's Windows Home. Obviously, I need Windows Pro to setup Bitlocker. (let's ignore for the moment that it is potentially do-able in Windows Home. Not a good path under the circumstances!)
So if the company purchases Windows Pro, I was looking at the ability to "upgrade" the O/S from Home to Pro. But the upgrade path inside Windows (as shown in the upgrade tutorial) is not available on this laptop due to "needs activation" getting in the way.
So what is the path to purchase and install Windows Pro on this laptop? I suppose we have to lose everything on it? That may not be an issue. It's virtually "new" to her. I spent some time getting it prepped for her, but no biggie.
If it were up to me, its a no-brainer to just get a brand new laptop, but they seem to be re$i$tant!
p.s. this might turn out to be moot point. I am investigating if the laptop has TPM or not. It definitely is not enabled, but it might not even exist in BIOS. Dell claims it started shipping TPM 1.2 in 2015. This laptop was shipped 2014. According to dell drivers/downloads page with service tag, there is not an upgrade driver for TPM 2.0. That probably means no TPM available but I want to look in BIOS and see for myself.
p.p.s. WIndows Version is V2004 (Build 19041.1110)