You reset your Windows PC and ended up with the Home edition. Here’s how to undo the Pro upgrade

There are many reasons to use the reset option to restart your Windows-based PC. You may be running an Insider Preview release and want to return to General Availability channel stability. Perhaps you want to give your old PC to another family member and remove all traces of the old PC.

I’ve spent the past week or two resetting an office full of Windows PCs, and one small problem keeps popping up. Once the reset was complete, I realized I was running Windows Home Edition. This is the edition this PC came with when I got it, and one of the first things I did was upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. I don’t know where that product key is now.

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This is surprisingly common given that many PC makers are looking to shave a few dollars off the price of their hardware by installing a much cheaper Home Edition. (Even Microsoft! For example, the new Surface Pro 9 is only available on Windows 11 Home edition.)

When the OEM built its PCs, the license information for the preinstalled Home edition was embedded in the system’s BIOS. After performing a full reset, that information will be used for the installation. As far as Windows is concerned, it will return the system to the state it was in when you bought it. This is based on the built-in version information found by Windows.

Luckily, Microsoft’s activation servers also contain details for Windows Pro upgrades. When he first entered his product key to perform that upgrade, these servers created his second activation record with a hash identifying the system based on its unique hardware. If you reinstall Windows Pro on that system, even without the product key, the activation server will restore the activation without squawk.

In this case, the easiest solution is to use Microsoft’s generic product key for Windows Pro to quickly upgrade from Home to Pro.

go to Settings > System > Activation. Click to expand the section labeled Upgrade your edition of Windows, Then click the button labeled Changejust to the right of the ; Change product key heading, as shown here.

Enter this product key in the dialog box that appears next.

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Follow the prompts to complete the upgrade. Reboot and connect to the internet to fully activate your Windows Pro installation.

There is nothing magical about that product key. When using this to upgrade a system running a Home edition that has never been activated for Windows 10 or Windows 11 Pro, an activation error occurs and the only way to recover is to use a valid ( Microsoft calls it “Genuine”) to enter. ) product key that grants upgrade rights.

If you want to skip and dance to this song in the future, try reinstalling it from a bootable USB flash drive. When you run setup, you can choose the exact edition to install by selecting the option to skip entering the product key.