Solved How did I manage to have had Home edition installed?

Here's a mystery that I cannot solve.

I was reading a posting somewhere in Eleven Forum that mentioned running the Local Group Policy editor. Out of curiosity I thought that I could try to emulate the steps in the posting. I remember clearly using gpedit.msc in the past so that program was familiar to me. However, to my surprise Windows could not find gpedit.msc. I searched on the Internet and found that gpedit.msc may be installed on Windows Home through a special procedure. I assumed that since I had Windows 11 Pro, maybe something was wrong with my Windows installation and I could install gpedit.msc using the procedure that applies to the Windows Home edition. I did go through the procedure and gpedit.msc was finally available to me.

However, something kept nagging me, because I couldn't think of a reason why it would be missing from my Windows 11 Pro. I checked the System information and I was shocked to see that I had the Windows 11 Home edition installed! Since I have a Windows 8 key I did an upgrade to Windows 11 Pro that went through with no incident.

The mystery is how on earth did I have Windows 11 Home edition installed? I had installed 21H2 in December 2021 as an update from the previous Windows 11 Pro. Could I have made a mistake then? I don't remember being given a choice about which Windows version I could update to.

Was your Pro version an upgrade from an original Home installation?

I have 4 devices where Pro is an upgrade from Home (2 @ Win 7, 1 @ Win 8, 1 @ Win 8.1), and every time I do a Win 11 clean install Home is auto chosen and I have to reapply the old Pro upgrade key

idgat said:

Was your Pro version an upgrade from an original Home installation?

I have 4 devices where Pro is an upgrade from Home (2 @ Win 7, 1 @ Win 8, 1 @ Win 8.1), and every time I do a Win 11 clean install Home is auto chosen and I have to reapply the old Pro upgrade key

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When I bought my laptop it had come with Windows 10 Home, but I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro.

Fortitude said:

When I bought my laptop it had come with Windows 10 Home, but I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro.

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And after that did you ever do a clean install of Windows? If so then that would explain it.

Starting with Windows 8 all PCs supplied with Windows pre-installed by the OEM have their Windows key embedded in the BIOS firmware. On a clean install Setup reads this key and uses it to choose the edition to install. Your PC's Home key would have meant that Home would be installed.

As you had upgraded Home to Pro previously your PC already had a digital licence for Pro. This means after installing Home you could have upgraded to Pro by changing the installed key to the generic Pro key.

Bree said:

And after that did you ever do a clean install of Windows? If so then that would explain it.

Starting with Windows 8 all PCs supplied with Windows pre-installed by the OEM have their Windows key embedded in the BIOS firmware. On a clean install Setup reads this key and uses it to choose the edition to install. Your PC's Home key would have meant that Home would be installed.

As you had upgraded Home to Pro previously your PC has a digital licence for Pro. This means after installing Home you could have upgraded to Pro by changing the installed key the generic Pro key.

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Thank you for the information. I don't remember precisely the history of my Windows installations over time other than the fact that on a desktop PC which I bought in 2010 I had Windows 7 Professional. I then upgraded it to Windows 8 Pro, 8.1 Pro and 10 Pro as each of these editions came out. I think I paid $30 at one point in time (maybe for the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro). In 2019 the desktop was scrapped and I bought a laptop which had Windows 10 Home. I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro using my Windows 8 key and then to Windows 11 Pro. I never had to pay anything since the $30 payment.

I'm not sure how this whole thing works given that I scrapped the desktop and bought a laptop. Even though there was a total change in hardware, I can still use my Windows 8 key to install Windows 10 and 11 Pro. I always believed that there was a restriction by Microsoft in using Windows on more than one PC. Microsoft certainly doesn't know that I have scrapped my desktop.

Because the original installed version was Home, that's what you'll get with every clean install. But you can upgrade to Pro using your Pro license key, or the Windows generic upgrade key (for this latter option, your search engine is your friend).

Fortitude said:

I'm not sure how this whole thing works given that I scrapped the desktop and bought a laptop. Even though there was a total change in hardware, I can still use my Windows 8 key to install Windows 10 and 11 Pro. I always believed that there was a restriction by Microsoft in using Windows on more than one PC. Microsoft certainly doesn't know that I have scrapped my desktop.

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In the spirit of the EULA there is, but I seriously believe that MS don't really care. I know that I have used my Pro upgrade license keys, on and off, for multiple devices, so much so I lost track of which keys went on which devices. I'm sure I've doubled up more than once - purely unintentionally - but have never experienced any problems.

idgat said:

...for the Windows generic upgrade key (for this latter option, your search engine is your friend).

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For this latter option Eleven Forum is your friend.

Bree said:

For this latter option Eleven Forum is your friend.

Generic Product Keys to Install or Upgrade Windows 11 Editions

This tutorial will provide you with a list of RTM (retail) and KMS generic keys (default keys) for all editions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Generic keys (aka: "default keys") for Windows 10/11 from Microsoft will allow you to install or upgrade to a specific Windows 10/11 edition you want...

www.elevenforum.com

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Not to say that I'm not confused, but I am! However, the link to Eleven Forum was interesting.

I looked through my saved keys and I used ShowKeyPlus with them. I have a "Windows 7 Professional OEM:SLP" key, a "Win 8 RTM Professional Retail" key, and a "Win 10 RTM CoreSingleLanguage OEM: DM" key.

I used the Windows 8 key to upgrade to Windows 11 Pro from Windows 11 Home, but ShowKeyPlus shows my installed key to be one of the RTM Generic Keys. There is an asterisk and a footnote in ShowKeyplus stating "Default key - requires a digital license for activation".

This is what I understand: A few hours ago when I upgraded my Windows from Home to Pro, Windows must have checked my digital license irrespective of the actual product key (Windows 8) that I had entered and made the upgrade based on my digital license. I assume it must have done this because (a) I was logged in to Windows and (b) I was connected to the Internet. Maybe it got my credentials from my Account on my PC in order to check the digital license. As far as the digital license goes Windows does not seem to care that my hardware has radically changed. For the upgrade Windows replaced the product key on my PC (Windows 8 key) with a RTM Generic Key.

Is the above jumble of thoughts correct?

Fortitude said:

A few hours ago when I upgraded my Windows from Home to Pro, Windows must have checked my digital license irrespective of the actual product key (Windows 8) that I had entered and made the upgrade based on my digital license. I assume it must have done this because (a) I was logged in to Windows and (b) I was connected to the Internet. Maybe it got my credentials from my Account on my PC in order to check the digital license. As far as the digital license goes Windows does not seem to care that my hardware has radically changed. For the upgrade Windows replaced the product key on my PC (Windows 8 key) with a RTM Generic Key.

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When you use an older Pro key (7, 8 or 8.1) to upgrade Home to Pro, Windows checks with the MS servers that the key is valid. That key does not get installed. The key is only used to see if you are entitled to the upgrade. If you are, then Windows will always install the generic Pro key in the upgrade from Home to Pro.

EDIT: This may happen for Windows Vista as well, cannot recall with 100% certainty :)

As was noted earlier, if you have a system that originally shipped with a Home edition of Windows 7 or newer, when you perform a clean install of Windows the default behavior of Windows will be to automatically select the Home edition without even presenting to you a choice of what edition to install.

There is a VERY simple workaround to this.

Open Notepad and type in the following two lines of text:

[Channel]
Retail

Save the file as "ei.cfg". When done, just make sure it is named "ei.cfg" and that it does NOT have a .txt extension.

Copy this file into the \Sources folder on your Windows installation media, for example, on your thumb drive.

It's just that easy. From now on, if you install from that media, you will be given a choice of what Windows edition to install.

More Information
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Why does this happen? If you purchase a computer from a major OEM such as Dell, HP, Acer, ASUS, etc. the BIOS contains a special signature indicating what edition of Windows the system shipped with. When you reinstall Windows, Windows setup reads that signature and automatically selects that edition.

Note that if you purchase a motherboard and assemble your own PC, such a signature is not present in the BIOS and as a result setup will not automatically select the edition to be installed.

@hsehestedt
Great tip, thank you.