Hello, how are you?
I understand that you would like to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and use your new digital license for activation.
In that case, I suggest you first try to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro using generic Windows upgrade key.
After that, Windows should identify the linked license in your email and automatically activate.
- Press Windows+I to access Windows settings, then access Update and security -> Activation;
- Click on Change Product Key, if it requests UAC permissions click on Yes;
- Enter the key below and click the Start Upgrade button:
VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
- Wait for the Windows 10 Pro upgrade process to finish, the system will probably restart a few times.
After finishing the update, access the settings again and check the activation.
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Purchasing this upgrade does not give you a Windows 10/11 Pro key outright, but instead merely gives you a "digital license" to Pro attached to your Microsoft account. Unfortunately, this severely complicates reinstalls, and worse, at least in my case, Microsoft straight up lost my digital license attached to my account.
I purchased a full-priced Windows 10 Home retail license from the Microsoft Store back in 2016, for which I received a Windows 10 home key that I used across a couple of machines over the years. Last year, I decided to upgrade my license to Windows 10 Pro, and purchased the $100 upgrade off the Microsoft store. The upgrade worked, and I was running Windows 10 Pro successfully.
2 days ago, my Windows suddenly was no longer activated. I tried to reactivate it in Activation settings (using my old Home key, logging into my Microsoft account that I used to purchase the Pro upgrade, and claiming that I changed my hardware). Today, I spent north of 3 hours with Activation Support on the phone, and having them do remote support (where they tried numerous command line tricks), and 3 separate support techs were unable to activate my Windows 10 Pro again (even though they acknowledged that they could see my account had purchased the Pro upgrade). We tried downgrading to Home and using the generic 10 Pro key to upgrade back to Pro with no luck either. I also attempted a clean install of Home and upgrading that to Pro, and deactivating all my machines on my Microsoft account, but with no dice. It seems the Pro upgrade I had purchase was straight up lost.
I eventually gave up and just bought a Windows 11 Pro retail license outright and used that to activate my machine. I suppose that frees up my old Windows 10 Home retail key for another machine, but I just straight up lost the $100 I paid for the Pro upgrade on that.
I suppose the lesson is to either buy a retail Pro license outright (either originally, or if you plan to upgrade from Home), as you will receive an actual product key that transfers across machines. Despite costing more in the end (Home retail + Pro upgrade is $240, while buying retail Pro in the first place is $200), the Pro upgrade gets you far less rights, including the apparent inability to transfer your Pro upgrade to another machine even if you're upgrading a retail Home key, and you run the very real risk of Microsoft losing your upgrade rights as they did with me (even though I didn't change my hardware). Lesson learned I suppose.
This page says it's possible:
However, my VAR reseller says that he contacted Microsoft and it's actually not the case. The only way to do it is to purchase Windows AnyTime Upgrade from Microsoft Online Store and pay online on each individual workstation.
We have about 20 of these to do, so would love to use Open licenses and just change the product key and save the labor hours.
Who to believe?
EDIT: The machines in question are Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 that were purchased from an electronics retail shop, not a VAR or Lenovo direct.