Upgrading Windows 7 Home Premium to Ultimate. Can be done.

[rogersmithiii]

In case anyone is running into issues trying to upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium to Ultimate, I did the following things and got it to work. I ran into the "Can't upgrade. Need clean install" issue, and the "you have a later version" issue.

1. Changed the two registry keys in

Hkey Local Machine\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\

Changed

Edition ID to "Enterprise"
Product Name to "Windows 7 Enterprise"


2. Browsed the Windows 7 Ultimate CD directory, found the Setup.exe file, right mouse clicked it, selected "properties", and told 7 that I wanted to run this file in Vista Version 2.

Then ran setup from Windows 7 Home Premium.

Worked great.

You obviously need an upgrade license for this to work, but I had just purchased one.

 

[SmurofNeves]

Interesting!!!

 

[theog]

You could have used AnyTime Upgrade.

No install files needed.
Only the Upgrade key is need.
Anytime upgrade only adds-on the Programs & Features from version to version.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/95744-windows-anytime-upgrade-how.html

 

[Brink]

Hello Roger,

Strange, you should have been able to upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium to Ultimate according to this below.

Windows 7 Upgrade Paths
​

If you have a upgrade Windows 7 Ultimate installation disc, then you could alsos use the method below to do a clean install with it instead if you like.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html
​

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[gregrocker]

The workaround you found has been used here many times with success. Only the regedit is needed from the original steps by which many originally changed from beta to RTM: Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to any retail version « Icrontic Tech

If you are one who requested this earlier it was likely not suggested because you are using Enterprise which uses a different activation scheme and thus hasn't been viewed previously as a candidate for the workaround.

I doubt if Anytime Upgrade would work because it's process is started by inserting a key and Enterprise uses VLK which isn't a consumer key. But someone could try it as well.

Thank you for heads-up that the workaround to in-place Upgrade between Win7 versions works to Enterprise.