Upgrade from Win7 Home to Professional

[winxpuser]

Looking for info on how to upgrade from Win7 Home to Win7 Professional. The info I could find related to this at Microsoft either did not apply or did not work. Here's what I am trying to do:

My PC is a home build with Windows 7 Home OEM. I would like to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional to have more control over user accounts and access to drives and programs.

I attempted to use Anytime Upgrade, but received message that this wasn't available - reason was not clear. All attempts to follow links to MS site resulted in options for upgrading to Windows 8/8.1.

I have not been able to find a way to purchase Home to Professional upgrade.

My question is, which options do I have, and which is the best/easiest/least expensive to use:

1) Purchase Win7 Professional OEM and do a clean install (or upgrade)

2) Purchase Win7 Professional Retail and do a clean install (or upgrade)

Would appreciate any help.

 

[DelJo63]

The Anytime Upgrade option would normally require you to purchase the 7 Pro upgrade (only or at a retailer) and then provide the product key from that package.

The 7Pro upgrade is becoming more difficult to find.

The OEM package is and will be available for quite some time, and *MAYBE* you can use it for an upgrade rather than a full clean reinstall. If it fails, you can always use the weekend to wipe-and-install it.

 

[winxpuser]

Thanks J.O.


I do have a question. I think there are limitations on OEM OS installation on a single motherboard and somehow these are linked (I.e. once I install an OEM version on a PC, the OS is tied to the motherboard, and the OS cannot be installed on a different motherboard).

Does this work the other way - once an OEM version is installed on a PC, another OEM version cannot be installed on that PC with the same motherboard?

If not, looks like I'll be getting an OEM version onf Win7 Pro.

 

[DelJo63]

Hmm:- humbug.

If the OEM license key has NEVER been installed, IMO it will install.

I've seen comments like this "re motherboard" and technically that's not accurate. Many systems may look for the MAC address of the NIC card as a sign of a unique install, but there's nowhere to sample or store "motherboard id"

 

[SNGX1275]

I've heard you can just phone Microsoft's activation line and go through an automated process and get your OEM copy on another computer...

 

[winxpuser]

Thanks for the input.

Tried to use Anytime Update from Win7 Home Premium, but was told key was not valid - which I assumed meant I had to do a complete reinstall (more on that later). Went through the process of a complete reinstall and when I got to the point of entering key, also got error that it was not valid. It was then that I realized after much trial and error that what I thought was a "B" in the key was an "8"!

Reinstall went fine and only took a couple hours for OS, drivers, updates, Firefox, anti-virus and BF4.

What I still don't know is if Anytime Update would have worked if I typed the key in correctly. I seem to have the same problem every time in try to read a MS software key. Zero "0", the letter "O" and somtimes the letter "D" tend to look the same as do 6, G, 5, and 2 and Z. I had to take a photo of the key with my iPhone to zone in and be able to read it.

I only see reading these keys getting harder as I get older and my eyesite gets poorer.

Now I can address the reasons I wanted to upgrade to Pro, but I'll save that for another post as I have run into a slight problem.

Thanks!