Windows 7: Upgrading Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional

I have a quick question. I installed a retail copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on my desktop a while back. I recently purchase a copy of Windows 7 Professional (from Digital River). I want to use my Home Premium license to put on my netbook which is currently running XP.

Anyway, I would like to upgrade the desktop without losing any data. Can I use my key that I received from Digital River to do the Anytime Upgrade? Is there any downside to doing it that way?



Next, when I go to install Home Premium on my netbook, will it activate without me having to call in?

yes to first question
Windows Anytime Upgrade - Windows 7 - Microsoft Windows

you might have to call ms to active home premium on netbook, however, you might be fortunate and not need to call. Phone activation is done through automated system.

A tutorial to help. can be done in 10 mins.

Windows Anytime Upgrade - How to

I just wanted to make sure that there were no other issues or limitations associated with using the Anytime Upgrade. So I am assuming that is my best option then correct since I don't want to do a clean install at this time?

Thanks!

I believe the Pro key used in Anytime Upgrade will completely replace the HP activation. When you then install HP on the netbook, you will be referred to an Activation robocall which updates the hardware signature associated with that Product Key. A recording will ask you if you only have that product key on one computer. When you answer correctly, it will update the hardware signature in MS activation computers so that any other machine's use of that key will be deactivated upon connection to the internet.

Only if the underlying use of HP as the launching platform for the Pro Anytime upgrade still somehow maintains HP activation would this deactivate your Pro install. This is fairly new ground for us here as we only confirmed in recent months that retail keys work in Anytime and related issues have not been completely sorted.

In the worst case where the HP key maintains activation as the base of your Pro install, you might have to do the workaround which allows an in-place Upgrade between versions of Windows 7, to avoid having to do a clean install of Pro. This definitely resets activation and says bye-bye to HP.

Once you have it set up running as you like, make a Windows 7 backup image stored externally so you can reimage the HD or a replacement instead of having to reinstall.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

Will an in-place upgrade allow me to retain my data? What does Windows do if it keeps the HP key as the underlying key? Will I still be able to access my data and whatnot?

Does it make sense to just do an in place upgrade now to avoid any potential issues all together?

I just don't want to risk losing any data that I may not have on my external drive currently. I have to go through the drive and clean some stuff off of it before I can back everything up again.

Thanks for the help so far!

I'd like to see what others say about whether using Pro retail key in Anytime is known to overwrite the underlying Home Prem activation and free up it's Product Key for reuse.

It is much safer to just unlock features with Anytime, as you'll need to backup all of your data to do either the in-place Upgrade workaround or of course a clean install of Pro.

To do the workaround, set a Restore point and then change the registry key shown in screenshot exactly as shown, which tricks the installer into thinking it is doing an (always allowed) same-version Repair Install Then run the Pro DVD upgrade install from HP desktop.

Anytime upgrade only adds on the Programs & Features from version to version.
No install files needed.
Only the Upgrade key is neeed.

I would really like to do it without formatting and whatnot, so the Anytime Upgrade is obviously attractive, if it doesn't cause more heartache. How much compression (roughly) is there when creating an image?

Very little image compression except in the paid programs. It only uses that actual used space however, not the empty spaces.

What brought up my hesitation about Anytime releasing your Home Premium key for reuse is that I am not even sure which DVD would be used for a Repair Install on the Anytime Upgraded Pro.

I posed this here some months ago and received only conjecture that it might not be possible to Repair Install the unlocked Pro version since neither HP or Pro DVD's would likely work.

Based on the principle that an in-place Upgrade invalidates the underlying OS's activation (under the EULA only, there is no mechanism), I would have to guess that since Anytime is an Upgrade it would invalidate the underlying Windows 7 for further use under EULA.

Hence you probably will want to do either the Clean Install or the in-Place Upgrade workaround which completely wipes away the HP activation and resets it requiring the insertion of a Pro key.