Got Win 10 Home instead of Pro

truxtun35 said:

I have 5 MSDN keys for Win 8.1 Pro from my last MSDN subscription which is now expired and none for Win 10 Pro or any other edition of Win 10.

I will run the tools from this forum and see what I get. I did use some tools, not from here, to see what keys were in the BIOS and registry and they were not the same. This was after upgrading to Win 8.1 Pro from Win 8 OEM.

Original key was XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-2R243 from BIOS
Registry key was XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-7QvP2

showkey should give you all the info you need, and read all the keys you need, https://www.tenforums.com/software-ap...7-showkey.html My laptop has an OEM 8.0 Core key but was running 8.1 Pro with my MSDN key. I got 10 Pro with the free upgrade.

NavyLCDR said:

Do you get unlimited keys to use or do you pay for only a certain number?

I can get up to 5 each of 10 Home and 10 Pro. Thing is though, if your MSDN subscription runs out and you don't renew, you can't request any new keys. You get to keep what you have but you can't get any new ones. That's what happened to my TechNet subscription. It's frozen now. No Windows 10 keys can be had.

truxtun35 said:

Entering the two keys into ShowKeyPlus returned invalid for both but upon looking at the ShowKeyPlus results the Original key I posted earlier is the one showing up as the Original Key and OEM key.

Showkeyplus on the Win10 laptop shows:

Windows Product Key Information
Product Name: Windows 10 Home
Product ID: 00326-10000-00000-AA641
Installed Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-8HVX7
Original Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-2R243
Original Edition: Win 8.1 RTM Core OEMM
OEM Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-2R243
OEM Edition: Win 8.1 RTM Core OEMM

That shows 8.1 Core to 10 Home, as far as I can tell anyway. I don't see Pro in there anywhere? In case your not aware, the MSDN ISO's will read the OEM embedded key automatically and install the matching version automatically, without asking. Your not asked to enter a key either. For Windows 8/8.1 anyway. My laptop has an 8.0 Core OEM embedded key. If I install with my 8.0 MSDN ISO I get 8.0 Core, use my 8.1 MSDN ISO and I get 8.1 Core. To get it to install Pro right from the get go I have to add a PID.txt file with my Pro key to the sources folder. Or use add features to get to Pro after the install.

Yeah, it's a bit different with the embedded keys and the auto detection part. I was learning as I went also. I wasn't an MVP when I got my laptop so I started with 8.0 Core. Then went to 8.0 Pro with my MSDN key latter on. Then to 8.1 Pro. All the fun started on the clean installs. The other wrinkle is because the upgrade to 8.1 from 8.0 was free, Microsoft coded 8.1 ISO's to use 8.0 keys and 8.1 keys, even OEM embedded keys. My guess is you thought you installed Pro but it was actually Core that got auto installed. That's what it looks like from that showkey screen shot. I never get asked to enter a key when I use my windows 8 MSDN ISO's on my laptop. The other way to do it is to download just Pro from here, http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-refresh-media It will ignore a Core OEM key and prompt for a Pro key. Then you can just install Pro right from the get go.

Your options are pretty well as you describe. Keep the extra Pro key for another PC, or start over and install 8.1 pro to get 10 Pro.