Windows 7: Upgrading using a volume win 7 dvd?

I was given a laptop at work. It came with win 7 home.
The workplace has access to a win 7 pro dvd for which apparently no key needs to be entered.



1. Can I upgrade using win 7 anytime upgrade using the in 7 pro dvd from work?
Or does it require a reinstallation?

2. If it is a reinstall, is there some way use the drivers already on the laptop to make things easier? There is a recovery partition on the laptop ~16GB, there is also a drivers partition.

3. If I can do an upgrade, can I change the language? The current language on the laptop is european; the language on the win 7 pro dvd is english.

Whats the make of the laptop? If it has a recovery partition on there, chances are you could create a REC DVD before upgrading for if things dont go as planned. Language wise, there should be no issue with changing the language but an additional update for this may be applied from Windows update.

Its an HP, and yes there is an option for making recovery dvds.

1) AFAIK, you wont be able to anytime upgrade from a consumer edition to Enterprise. Thats because enterprise licenses are only sold via a volume license agreement and activated (mostly) via company servers. In other words, you would need to do a clean install.

2) For the drivers, it should be possible to back them up using freeware like doubledriver, then just restore them. You can also download current drivers and save them to a cd, then use them for repeated deployments.

3) On Enterprise version, you can legally download and deploy language packs available freely from MS sites.

Thanks, I thought windows 7 enterprise was different from windows 7 professional?
In our software repo, we have windows 7 enterprise, as well as windows 7 professional

Best bet is to create the Rec DVD's using the HP Recovery Manager and then go with the flow so to speak!! If you've got means to reload the OS (RED Media) then nothing to worry about suppose apart from the ballache IF it doesnt work.

Windows 7 pro works with KMS activation too. But it depends on what your setup is, if the dvd requires no key there may be a retail/kms key custom embedded.