Windows 7: Window 7 Pro key with Home premium disk?

Hey guys,



I pre-ordered the windows 7 home premium a while ago and recently installed it on my computer. Last night I decided to jump on the student deal and get the PRO version shipped to me. Since I already have windows 7 home premium installed on my computer (i did not activate windows yet) can I just put in the PRO key or to I have to do a reinstall?

What you do is run an Anytime Upgrade. Then enter your Pro key.

no, you will need to either do an upgrade to pro, or reinstall... A home premium key will not activate a Pro version of Windows 7

He is wanting to use a Pro key to activate a Home version. Doing an Anytime will work.

Sweet, thanks Jonathan. I was worried I was going to have to do a reload!

Nope, an Anytime will take about 10 minutes. I did the exact same thing you did, and after I upgraded, the only change I found is that IE was pinned to my taskbar, as I hadn't pinned it. Remember: Anytime is different than running the installer and hitting Upgrade.

Well not sure about premium but I had activation issues and i did the following

1: clean install of windows7
2: try to activate (no joy)
3: ran the following

net stop slsvc
Cd %windir%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareLicensing
Ren tokens.dat tokens.old
cd %windir%\system32
net start slsvc
slmgr.vbs /rilc

4: rebooted and try activation (again no joy)
5: run windows 7 upgrade from disk
6: tried to activate received wrong serial requires ultimate product key????

I have windows 7 pro... On checking it seems yes my pro is now ultimate and has stopped asking for activation and states it is indeed activated???

no idea how this happened but I am now happy with my new windows 7 OS

You would run the Windows 7 Pro installer from your Premium desktop and do an Upgrade install which upgrades to Pro but keeps all of your programs, files and settings in place - only re-activation is required. Just insert your pro key when prompted and later activate at the Computer>Properties activation link.

Your Home Premium key is then available to reinstall on another machine.

*I do not know about Anytimes but thought they had to be purchased from MS directly, and OP says he is purchasing student deal. Wouldn't that be a different license?