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Windows 10 upgrade home to pro oem free |
Windows 10 upgrade home to pro oem free
Mansi Vijay , February 24, Share on:. So, before any mishap happens, backup your data carefully. See Also Data Backup, Do it the Right Way! On this World Backup Day, don't forget to backup your data and keep it secured. This Windows tax is profoundly unfair to PC builders, because large OEMs such as Dell and Lenovo pay much lower licensing fees to put Windows on prebuilt systems though these costs are not made public.
Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. No matter how or whether you pay for it, you can download Windows 10 opens in new tab or download Windows 11 opens in new tab for free from Microsoft. And, in fact, you should only download it from Microsoft, as grabbing it from any other site or from a P2P network could give you malware.
Microsoft offers a free media creation tool, which grabs the latest code from the Internet and then burns itself to a USB Flash drive or outputs a Windows 10 or Windows 11 ISO file you can write to a drive yourself. Once that's done, you can boot from your installation media and start the process. During installation, Microsoft asks you to enter a Windows 10 or 11 product key. If you are still on Windows 7 or 8, you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free.
If you have an old, retail non-OEM copy of Windows 7, 8 or 10 you are no longer using on another PC, you can likely use the product key when you do a fresh install of Windows on your new PC. However, you must first make sure it's deactivated on the old PC it came from.
See our article on how to transfer a Windows 10 or 11 license to a new PC for step-by-step information on how to retrieve and move your key. The process of transferring a Windows license varies, depending upon whether you have digital or non-digital license.
With a the former, you'll need to log into your Microsoft account to deactivate the old PC. And with the latter, you'll want to use a command line command to terminate the activation. Note that if the product key comes from a prebuilt computer that came from the factory with Windows on it, it has an OEM key that may not work on a different new PC.
Feel free to try it, though, because if it works you have Windows 10 or 11 for free. The good news is that you only have two serious disadvantages from not activating Windows 10 or However, if you are using a Microsoft account that syncs with another computer on which you have custom wallpaper, that wallpaper will appear on your unactivated Windows.
Now that you know how to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, be sure to check out our other Windows 10 tutorials below, including tips on how to uninstall programs on Windows 10 , how to find your MAC address in Windows 10 , how to create a new folder in Windows 10 and more.
Laptop Mag Laptop Mag. Bryan Clark. More about windows 10 guide. Screen mirroring in Windows How to turn your PC into a wireless di After the upgrade was complete, I used a bootable USB flash drive containing Windows 10 setup files to reinstall a clean copy of Windows 10 Pro, skipping the option to enter a product key as part of setup, as shown below.
When prompted, be sure to choose Windows 10 Pro as the edition to install. The system was properly activated, because Microsoft's servers recognized the hardware and used the digital license. Looking for technical information about Windows 10 releases, new features, known issues, troubleshooting, and tech support?
Start here. The one gotcha in this series of scenarios comes when you have a system that includes digital licenses for both Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. In that scenario, you can inadvertently restore Windows 10 Home. This happened recently when I used a recovery image to reinstall Windows 10 on a Surface Pro PC that had originally shipped with Windows 10 Home and had been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. Not surprisingly, using the recovery image gave me an installation of Windows 10 Home.
If that happens to you, don't bother searching for the product key you used to upgrade. Instead, use Microsoft's generic product key to force the upgrade. After the upgrade completes, you should see a Success notification. Check the Activation screen again to confirm that you're now running Windows 10 Pro. After you've successfully performed a Home-to-Pro upgrade, you can file that product key away. Your upgrade is now a digital license, attached to your unique hardware.
If you perform a reinstallation of Windows, Microsoft's activation servers will recognize the hardware and activate Windows 10 automatically. I have tested this scenario multiple times on hardware that originally shipped with Windows Home and was upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. After the upgrade was complete, I used a bootable USB flash drive containing Windows 10 setup files to reinstall a clean copy of Windows 10 Pro, skipping the option to enter a product key as part of setup, as shown below.
When prompted, be sure to choose Windows 10 Pro as the edition to install. The system was properly activated, because Microsoft's servers recognized the hardware and used the digital license. Looking for technical information about Windows 10 releases, new features, known issues, troubleshooting, and tech support?
Start here.
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