unable to upgrade from home premium to ultimate

Kari · 18 Apr 2013

By the way, to show you can Anytime Upgrade with full retail key, I just did it screenshotting as I went.

Installed and activated Windows 7 Home Premium on an empty PC
Using the slmgr /upk command uninstalled a Windows 7 Professional full retail key used on another PC
On Home Premium, first thing after installation went to Start Menu > All Programs > Windows Anytime Upgrade
Selected the Enter an upgrade key option, entered the Professional full retail key
After verification I simply accepted license terms and clicked Upgrade

Ten minutes later I was running Windows 7 Professional, Anytime Upgraded from Home Premium with a full retail key.

Kari

davesurrey · 18 Apr 2013

TwoCables:
What's on the disc?
Windows 7 Ultimate
Includes Service Pack 1
64-bit software
6/11 X15-60561-03
Includes Windows Anytime Upgrade
Do not lend or mak illegal copies
DVD.

That's it.
HTH

Kari:
Just tried again to do an Anytime Upgrade and same old error.

Kari · 18 Apr 2013

OK Dave, your only option is a clean install. Version intern in-place upgrade is not possible as I told before, except to the same edition already installed doing a repair install.

Kari

TwoCables · 18 Apr 2013

davesurrey said:

TwoCables:
What's on the disc?
Windows 7 Ultimate
Includes Service Pack 1
64-bit software
6/11 X15-60561-03
Includes Windows Anytime Upgrade
Do not lend or mak illegal copies
DVD.

That's it.
HTH

Kari:
Just tried again to do an Anytime Upgrade and same old error.

Then put the DVD in, click the "Install now" button, agree to the license terms, and then on the next prompt after that, click "Upgrade".

Kari · 18 Apr 2013

TwoCables said:

davesurrey said:

TwoCables:
What's on the disc?
Windows 7 Ultimate
Includes Service Pack 1
64-bit software
6/11 X15-60561-03
Includes Windows Anytime Upgrade
Do not lend or mak illegal copies
DVD.

That's it.
HTH

Kari:
Just tried again to do an Anytime Upgrade and same old error.

Then put the DVD in, click the "Install now" button, agree to the license terms, and then on the next prompt after that, click "Upgrade".

Again wrong information!

Time for a fact check:

Dave, as I have mentioned several times in this thread you can upgrade your Home Premium to Ultimate but only by Anytime Upgrade or clean install.

You cannot in-place upgrade within the same version, in-place upgrade to any edition of Windows 7 is only possible in these two cases:

You are upgrading from the same or inferior edition of Windows Vista than your Windows 7
You are doing a repair install of Windows 7 (in-place to same edition already installed)

Preparing to defend my statement as I felt I might need a screenshot to show this, I wiped the HD on the test rig I used in example in my post #21, installed Home Premium on it, activated Home Premium, inserted Ultimate DVD, run the setup app, selected Install > Upgrade.

It results this:

unable to upgrade from home premium to ultimate-2013-04-19_011824.png

You must do a clean custom install if Anytime Upgrade does not work for you. You will lose all you installed software. Your personal files will be saved in Windows.old folder if you do not format the HD during installation. Anyway, I recommend you to backup all your personal files and folders.

Good luck to you, Dave.

Kari

TwoCables · 18 Apr 2013

Please excuse and forgive me for being wrong. I only want him to get this done.

Anyway, I feel that this is hopeless because he does not have a genuine copy. As he said, the label is black. Why is it black? Where did this DVD come from? Who made it? What is it really for? Is it OEM? Is it an illegal copy?

So yeah, I think that this will never work.

Dave: why do you want to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate? What does Ultimate have for you that Home Premium doesn't?

Kari · 18 Apr 2013

TwoCables said:

Anyway, I feel that this is hopeless because he does not have a genuine copy.

The MGDIAG from the Ultimate seems genuine, the partial product key is not flagged as counterfeit.

gregrocker · 18 Apr 2013

You cannot install using the Upgrade button choice from boot. It can only be run from the Vista desktop to in-place Upgrade over Vista.

In your case a valid retail Full or Upgrade Win7 key should work to Anytime Upgrade from Premium to Ultimate as Kari has maintained.

If it fails the most common reason is always inputting the wrong characters. Try again and triple-check the input.

Keep in mind that this is the exact same OS except you are only unlocking a few extra expensive features which 90% of consumers don't even need, so be sure you actually need them before wasting both a Premium and an Ultimate key that could be installed separately for twice the value: Compare Windows 7 Editions - Windows 7 Forums

To Clean Install Windows 7 I'd save a Win7 backup image of Home Premium, boot the Ultimate installer which will see the underlying OS to allow use of Upgrade version key during install. Only if the drive is new or cleaned does it require extra steps if this is Upgrade version.

TwoCables · 18 Apr 2013

There are also these:

Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows 7, what's the difference between the editions? - Neowin

Kari · 18 Apr 2013

Our own: Compare Windows 7 Editions