I used the "anytime upgrade" option and upgraded Home Premium to Professional. I have decided that $90+ is a bit too much for the additional perks, and I have 3 days to activate Pro version. My question is what will happen in 3 days if I don't activate the Pro upgrade? My hope is that it will revert back to Home Premium, but will it stay in "pro" version and keep bugging me to put in the new key?
This is unlikely... There is no functionality in Windows 7 that permits it to roll-back to a previous version because you didn't purchase a new key...
I'm guess you're going to have to reinstall Premium...
Luck
Didn't you put the Anytime Upgrade key in before it unlocked Professional features for you? This is how it is supposed to function.
If you did, then you'll need to call MS Customer Service to try to get a refund and instructions how to roll it back. Good luck with that.
If you used a Pro installer to upgrade HP, then there is a workaround to change back to HP. But this has nothing to do with Anytime Upgrade which you say you used, so you need to clarify exactly what you did.
Have a recent system image and accompanying disks. Have to re-install a few things, but it's not that bad. I tried to use the same product key twice, thinking it would just charge me twice, but .....
What Product key did you use twice? Anytime Upgrade?
It has to be done upfront or it won't unlock the features of the greater version, to my knowledge.
If you tried an anytime key in a Pro install or in-place upgrade, it would likely show only 3 days to activate if you annoyed it with some kind of questionable action.
It will not roll back to Premium on its own. You need to reimage it using image if you have one, or use the workaround to change within Win7 versions back to the one for which you have a key. Or clean reinstall.
Last edited by gregrocker; 03 Mar 2010 at 00:50.
Used "anytime upgrade" on another personal computer, paid for it, fine. used the same key to start pro upgrade on Home Premium system, it upgraded, so I thought I would be charged again, but then after upgrade says I have three days to activate, and it won't accept the key, and when I choose to purchase another key, I get an "Authentication" site that says that the version is genuine, but I have three days to activate my "authentic", activated version. I don't even want to purchase another upgrade this route now, because of all of the variables so far. If it wasn't going to work, then it probably shouldn't have accepted the key in the first place. The key was accepted, all "Pro" features are enabled, but now I have to enter another key.
I believe you can run a Repair Install using Win7 Home Premium ISO to reset both the installation and the activation to Home Premium, then insert the retail HP product key at Computer>Properties link.
If the OS in question was factory installed, you can run the factory recovery disks if you made them. Or use a Home Premium ISO to run Repair Install and then insert key stickered to machine.
Either one of these might require a call to MS to complete the activation process, so just tell them you are reinstalling the OS on same machine.
I used a 10 day old system image with great results. I need only re-tweak rainmeter, sysinternals, and a few others. Learned a lot, and it will prevent me from doing the same thing again.
Thanks for the input.
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