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I have a legitimate Windows 10 key, which I got from Microsoft Imagine as part of being a student at my school.

I have previously used the key 1 time on another computer of mine and successfully upgraded it from Home to Pro.

Now I am trying to upgrade my other computer from Home to Pro, using the same key.

I have tried this through the Microsoft Store app, where it says install and allows me to enter a product key. It then tells me to hold on and that it is preparing for the upgrade.

Briefly afterwards it restarts my computer, but my windows edition is still Windows 10 Home.

I have also tried to enter the key through the control panel, but with the same result.

Can this key only be used to upgrade a single computer?

It seems it should tell me earlier in the process then. After all it acts like it is upgrading and even restarts to finish the upgrade.

Any ideas why this doesn't work? I would like to upgrade to the Pro edition to enable Hyper-V.

Thank you in advance for your help.

EDIT:

Regarding the duplicate claim.

Moab I would argue it isn't a duplicate as this key was not from the same source. As Joel Coehoorn specified in his answer there are different types of keys. The error message in the link you gave is also an error I never got. Meaning that the behaviour response from Windows was different.

Doh09
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    "Can this key only be used to upgrade a single computer?" Exactly. Unfortunately, you can't upgrade multiple computers from Windows 10 Home to Pro utilizing the same product key. – Run5k Jun 06 '18 at 16:10
  • That's a shame. You'd think they would give some kind of warning about that being the case though. – Doh09 Jun 06 '18 at 16:21
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    Perhaps, but during previous generations of Windows operating systems, a similar scenario to the one you described has always been constrained to one upgrade per product key. – Run5k Jun 06 '18 at 16:25
  • @Doh09 It’s stated in the EULA – Ramhound Jun 06 '18 at 17:30
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    Moab I would argue it isn't a duplicate as this key was not from the same source. As Joel Coehoorn specified in his answer there are different types of keys.

    The error message in the link you gave is also an error I never got. Meaning that the behaviour response from Windows was different.

     – Doh09 Jun 06 '18 at 18:53
  • The error may be different, but the solution is the same: You cannot use this type of key to activate/upgrade more than one computer. – music2myear Jun 08 '18 at 16:13
  • The solution is the same. But you cannot deduce that the solution is the same without knowledge of what is wrong. I had no error message to go by. No indication of that it should not be possible to do what I attempted to do. Windows itself presented buttons and tabs as though it was perfectly reasonable and possible. – Doh09 Jun 08 '18 at 17:14

1 Answers1

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Not all product keys and Windows installations are created equal. Aside from activating different editions of Windows (Home vs Pro vs Edu vs Enterprise), keys fall into (at least) three different distribution groups:

  • OEM
  • Consumer/Retail
  • Volume Licensing/Enterprise

I've heard certain large OEMs may even have their own groups. Additionally, Windows 10 may be a little more fluid on some of these rules than previous versions of Windows.

The important thing is a given Windows installation can only be activated by a key matching it's distribution group. The student/Imagine key is most likely a volume key, from the last group I listed. But your current Windows installation is almost certainly an OEM distribution. This means your new key will not work with your current Windows install for an in-place upgrade.

What you should be able to do is back up your files, download a new set of media via the Imagine program, install the new edition of Windows from scratch (with your new key), re-install your programs, and re-store your backup.

Sounds like a pain, I know, but those're the breaks :(

And, of course, all this is separate from the fact that the likely key only represents one license, which was already used elsewhere... though part of what makes this a volume key in the first place is they sometimes can be used more than once, so check with your program information.

Joel Coehoorn
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