Upgrading Windows 10 Home to Pro?

Just to clarify the deal for Windows 10 Pro for £20 is currently a Groupon Voucher offer, so I would imagine it would be legal - although I can't be 100% sure it's all above board.

I was quite lucky with getting Windows 10 Pro on my desktop as when Windows 8 was first on sale, in order to drive sales Microsoft did a deal of Windows 8 Pro for £20 so I snapped that up and therefore have been able to update to 8.1 Pro and 10 Pro on that machine. Wish I'd bought another copy of 8 at the time.

@Brink Could you upgrade from Home to Pro with the generic key, then enter the OEM key to activate? I "think" that was doable in the past? A lot of stuff changed with 1709 though. Down side to trying this is, if it rejects your OEM key your stuck with a not activated 10 Pro. You can't go back to 10 Home with a key change. You would have to reinstall. Or resort to some other trickery to get back to 10 Home.

Hello Kerry @alphanumeric, :)

You used to be able to, but no longer. If an edition upgrade requires a restart, then a generic key cannot be entered to upgrade the edition.

Unfortunately, an edition upgrade from Home to Pro does require a restart.

I had a feeling you were going to post something along those lines. I remember seeing that "now". I was looking for that, but your beat me to it. My PC's all already have a DL for Pro so I assume it will work for me. Actually I'm pretty sure I've already done it on one PC on a clean install of 1709. Home to Pro with 3V66T key. Thanks for the quick reply, Now if I can only remember that for the next time it comes up.

Brink said:

Hello Kerry @alphanumeric, :)

You used to be able to, but no longer. If an edition upgrade requires a restart, then a generic key cannot be entered to upgrade the edition.

Unfortunately, an edition upgrade from Home to Pro does require a restart.

That does not state an oem key will not work. There are no upgrade keys for w10 afaik.

cereberus said:

That does not state an oem key will not work. There are no upgrade keys for w10 afaik.

It's stated in the note box under step 5C of the tutorial below, and confirmed by many that had reported it. It would be nice if that would change though.

Upgrade Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro Installation Upgrade Tutorials

cereberus said:

That does not state an oem key will not work. There are no upgrade keys for w10 afaik.

I was asking if you could go from Home to Pro with the generic key, then enter your OEM key. From that, you can no longer go from Home to Pro with the Generic key, unless that PC already has a DL for Pro. It checks activation before doing the upgrade. Not after like it used too.

I see what your saying, just putting Brinks's post in context. I was thinking it might be a workaround to the OEM key being refused when entered from 10 Home.

I do believe it will become mute when the free upgrade finally ends. Assuming the only keys looked for by install media are Windows 10 keys.