Domain join, backup data to home/business network, Windows XP Mode are some of the features that differentiate Professional edition from the Home Premium edition. Many Home Premium edition users are upgrading to the Professional edition to get some of the advanced features available in Windows 7 Pro edition.
Users who would like to upgrade their Home Premium edition to Professional can use the Windows Anytime Upgrade feature. Using this feature, you can easily upgrade to a higher edition without loosing your data and installed programs.
In this guide, we will show you how to upgrade your Windows 7 Home Premium edition to Professional.
Note: You can also use this procedure to upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate edition.
Upgrading Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional
1. Open System Properties by right-clicking on Computer icon and then selecting Properties option. You can also launch System Properties by pressing Windows + Pause/Break hotkey.
2. In the System Properties, click on the option named Get more features with a new edition of Windows 7 to launch Windows Anytime Upgrade wizard.
3. In the window, you will have two options:
# Go online to choose the edition of Windows that’s best for you
# Enter an upgrade key
The first option displays the upgrade price for Professional and Ultimate editions with their features. You can also purchase the upgrade license here. Use the second option if you own an upgrade license for Professional or Ultimate edition.
In this guide, we choose the second option (Enter an upgrade key) as we have an upgrade key for Windows 7 Professional edition. If you have Ultimate edition upgrade license, simply enter the key to upgrade to Ultimate edition.
Please note that Windows Anytime Upgrade key is different from product key.
4. Click Next button to allow Windows Anytime Upgrade to verify the entered key. Verification should be done within a few seconds.
5. If the key is genuine, you will be asked to accept the license agreement. Click on I accept button and then Upgrade button to continue. If you have any running applications you will be asked to save your work and close all running programs.
6. Wait for a while and let the Windows complete the upgrade process. You are done! You have just upgraded Windows 7 Home Premium edition to Professional.
ColdFusion says
Well this doesn’t work anymore.. thanks Windows.
Mike, The Computer Guy says
Every guy in the comments seems to have the ID10T error and ask here for the key.
Just buy a key off of Ebay, Aliexpress and/or any other shop that carries the 2-10 $ keys.
M$ has no legal and/technical way of stopping those cheap licenses.
Mitch says
Hi Annie,
The issue you are experiencing is due to running the 32 bit version of Windows. The 32 bit version can only address 4 GB of RAM. To address more than 4GB of memory, you must have a 64 bit operating system (even Home is fine – it supports 128GB of ram).
[In case you want to know the technical explanation, it boils down to the number of possible addresses for things being stored to or retrieved from RAM. 32 bits means 2^32 possible addresses (4,294,967,296?). 64 bits means 2^64 possible addresses (18,446,744,073,709,551,616?). If that’s confusing, imagine a street where the address on each house was only two digits (e.g. bits). You could have 10^2 addresses on that street (100). After you had a hundred houses, you would be out of numbers to put on the homes. But if you used four-digit addresses on the homes, you could put 10^4 (1000) unique homes/addresses on that street).]
Annie says
I have windows 7 32 bit OS home premium I can only use 4gb memory although I have 16gb I have gone on boot advanced options and ticking the box still shows 3.5gb usable memory. I’m wanting to upgrade to professional instead now I would like the update key if possible?
Jim L says
The biggest thing I miss in Win7 (after XP) is the double monitor in the tray (next to the clock) that shows the internet traffic coming and going. How to I get that back in Win7??
Scott says
I have a computer that is on windows 7 home with Milestone VMS running on it. I would like to upgrade this computer to windows 7 professional. Can i use widows anytime upgrade to do this? will my current programs still work after the upgrade? Do I needed to move information and programs to an external storage before the upgrade and then reinstall afterwards? will driver configurations still work after the upgrade?
Thanks
Scott
waz says
i want the upgrade key…..
rounel pamotillo says
my upgrade is hanging in 12% then it shut down.