Upgrade Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Pro for Workstations  

How do I get a key to activate Workstation? I can't find a place to buy/upgrade from...

Have any of you verified the new features of Pro for Workstations? I upgraded to a machine with 4 processors (40 cores total) from Pro to Pro for Workstations, and after the upgrade (and multiple resets) Windows still only shows 2 CPUs (20 cores). I'm wondering if this is a result of upgrading from Pro, but that is the only way I know of so far (I received the key via Visual Studio subscription).

matt306 said:

Have any of you verified the new features of Pro for Workstations? I upgraded to a machine with 4 processors (40 cores total) from Pro to Pro for Workstations, and after the upgrade (and multiple resets) Windows still only shows 2 CPUs (20 cores). I'm wondering if this is a result of upgrading from Pro, but that is the only way I know of so far (I received the key via Visual Studio subscription).

I've posted about this in length on Reddit, but yes I have noticed a significant difference on both my tower Workstation and Lenovo P71 workstation laptop (which came with Win 10 Pro for Workstations' media).

NVDIMM-N support alone is huge, and PfW optimizes the synergy between the NVDIMM-N memory and M.2 NVMe SSDs quite well out-of-the-box. After making a few GPO changes, tweaking indexing and setting the virtual memory paging file to a static custom size the difference was even more substantial.

SMB Direct, with a RDMA-capable network adapter, provides a huge boost in throughput and substantially lowers CPU usage.

Full usage of the Intel Xeon E7 series (all Xeon/server grade processors).

Hyper-V is more polished, particularly its virtual switch setup. It also utilizes VT-d I/O (and I'm certain AMD's IOMMU) at a much more beneficial level.

Right now it's a super-solid setup OS with 16 GB NVDIMM-N memory, 2 M.2 NVMe SSDs, quad Xeon E7-8890s, dual 2-port (4 total ports) Gigabit LAN cards with one card dedicated exclusively to a Hyper-V 64-bit guest system with secure VT-d access (just for testing), and I tossed in 2 spare regular WD Red NASWare HDDs that I decided to use solely for Storage Spaces setup with RTFS.

One hardly needs high-end hardware to notice a difference. Simply logging multiple CPU cores' throughput, heat and overall rates of high processing while playing a fairly intensive game or multitasking will show a difference.

Simply setting up a VM using Hyper-V with a dual-NIC card (that tons of regular motherboards have now) will show a difference.

Using any sort of VPN/interweb/domain network paths will show a difference.

Lastly, I did write a PowerShell script that will convert Windows 10 Home (Core) to the full and authentic Windows 10 Pro for Workstations edition. It does not simply change the EditionID like Microsoft recommends when upgrading editions offline, but also changes the XML data to PfW values.

Here's the XML data from my physical copy of PfW sent by Lenovo with for my P71 workstation laptop:

Code:

WIM Information:
---------------------
Image Count:    1
Compression:    LZX
Part Number:    1/1

Image Index: 1
-------------------
Name:        Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Description:    Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Flags:        ProfessionalWorkstation

WIM XML Information:
---------------------------
<WIM>
  <TOTALBYTES>3508490595</TOTALBYTES>
  <IMAGE INDEX="1">
    <WIMBOOT>0</WIMBOOT>
    <WINDOWS>
      <ARCH>9</ARCH>
      <PRODUCTNAME>Microsoft® Windows® Operating System</PRODUCTNAME>
      <EDITIONID>ProfessionalWorkstation</EDITIONID>
      <INSTALLATIONTYPE>Client</INSTALLATIONTYPE>
      <SERVICINGDATA>
        <GDRDUREVISION>0</GDRDUREVISION>
        <PKEYCONFIGVERSION>10.0.16299.0;2016-01-01T00:00:00Z</PKEYCONFIGVERSION>
      </SERVICINGDATA>
      <PRODUCTTYPE>WinNT</PRODUCTTYPE>
      <PRODUCTSUITE>Terminal Server</PRODUCTSUITE>
      <LANGUAGES>
        <LANGUAGE>en-US</LANGUAGE>
        <DEFAULT>en-US</DEFAULT>
      </LANGUAGES>
      <VERSION>
        <MAJOR>10</MAJOR>
        <MINOR>0</MINOR>
        <BUILD>16299</BUILD>
        <SPBUILD>0</SPBUILD>
        <SPLEVEL>0</SPLEVEL>
      </VERSION>
      <SYSTEMROOT>WINDOWS</SYSTEMROOT>
    </WINDOWS>
    <NAME>Windows 10 Pro for Workstations</NAME>
    <DESCRIPTION>Windows 10 Pro for Workstations</DESCRIPTION>
    <FLAGS>ProfessionalWorkstation</FLAGS>
  </IMAGE>
</WIM>

And here is the XML data from my conversion script:

Code:

WIM Information:
---------------------
Image Count:    1
Compression:    LZX
Part Number:    1/1

Image Index: 1
-------------------
Name:        Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Description:    Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Flags:        ProfessionalWorkstation

WIM XML Information:
---------------------------
<WIM>
  <IMAGE INDEX="1">
    <WIMBOOT>0</WIMBOOT>
    <WINDOWS>
      <ARCH>9</ARCH>
      <PRODUCTNAME>Microsoft® Windows® Operating System</PRODUCTNAME>
      <EDITIONID>ProfessionalWorkstation</EDITIONID>
      <INSTALLATIONTYPE>Client</INSTALLATIONTYPE>
      <SERVICINGDATA>
        <GDRDUREVISION>0</GDRDUREVISION>
        <PKEYCONFIGVERSION>10.0.16299.15;2016-01-01T00:00:00Z</PKEYCONFIGVERSION>
      </SERVICINGDATA>
      <PRODUCTTYPE>WinNT</PRODUCTTYPE>
      <PRODUCTSUITE>Terminal Server</PRODUCTSUITE>
      <LANGUAGES>
        <LANGUAGE>en-US</LANGUAGE>
        <DEFAULT>en-US</DEFAULT>
      </LANGUAGES>
      <VERSION>
        <MAJOR>10</MAJOR>
        <MINOR>0</MINOR>
        <BUILD>16299</BUILD>
        <SPBUILD>15</SPBUILD>
        <SPLEVEL>64</SPLEVEL>
      </VERSION>
      <SYSTEMROOT>WINDOWS</SYSTEMROOT>
    </WINDOWS>
    <NAME>Windows 10 Pro for Workstations</NAME>
    <DESCRIPTION>Windows 10 Pro for Workstations</DESCRIPTION>
    <FLAGS>ProfessionalWorkstation</FLAGS>
  </IMAGE>
</WIM>

I can post it up if anyone's interested in testing PfW. It just needs either a AIO, multi-index version of the fall Creator's Update that contains Windows 10 Home - which can be downloaded from Microsoft and elsewhere - or a single-index image of Windows 10 Home.

Hi, can you tell or sent me the PowerShell script that will convert Windows 10 Home (Core) to the full and authentic Windows 10 Pro for Workstations Edition, please?

Thanks

Hi,

Keep in mind that you probably won't be able to activate it for now though.

Cheers,

DrEmpiricism said:

I've posted about this in length on Reddit, but yes I have noticed a significant difference on both my tower Workstation and Lenovo P71 workstation laptop (which came with Win 10 Pro for Workstations' media)....
Full usage of the Intel Xeon E7 series (all Xeon/server grade processors).

...
Right now it's a super-solid setup OS with 16 GB NVDIMM-N memory, 2 M.2 NVMe SSDs, quad Xeon E7-8890s, dual 2-port (4 total ports) Gigabit LAN cards with one card dedicated exclusively to a Hyper-V 64-bit guest system with secure VT-d access (just for testing), and I tossed in 2 spare regular WD Red NASWare HDDs that I decided to use solely for Storage Spaces setup with RTFS. '''

Thanks for the reply. I was specifically wondering if in your experience the OS detected all 4 of you XEON processors? As I said, my install is only detecting 2 of my 4 processors (only 20 of the 40 physical cores), and I'm trying to troubleshoot/wondering what others' experience has been.