Fun times updating Windows 11 Home to Pro

I’ve done home version to Pro version upgrades a good many times in the past, generally the process is quick and at the point of being boring.  I’ve done this with several Surfaces and my wife’s old Dell All-in-one all running Windows 10.  A few months back, the old Dell’s hard drive came up unbootable - fire it up and I got “Please insert boot disk” which is never a good sign.  Considering its age and the fact that it’s i7 processer is so old it couldn’t begin to accept Windows 11, I decided it was time to replace the machine with a new one and, thanks to a sale at Costco, we acquired a shiny new Lenovo IdeaCentre 27" All-in-One with Windows 11 Home.

Windows 11 Pro

So, after getting it unboxed, assembled, turned on, and setup to the point we had the Windows 11 desktop, it’s time to upgrade Home to Pro.  To do this, I purchased a shiny new Pro key from the good folks at Best Buy.  From there, Start > Settings > About > Change Product Key or Upgrade your copy of Windows > Change Product Key, add the new key and let ‘er rip…or so I thought.  It churned a minute or so, then came back with an error - Unable to activate Windows (0xc0ea000a):

Changed Hardware – Huh???

Nope, no hardware changes whatsoever, this is right out f the box.  The article I read on the error also says “It is widely known that this Windows 11/10 activation error usually rectifies itself after a couple of hours. The explanation for this lapse is that sometimes Microsoft activation servers can be inundated with activation requests—hence, the server is overloaded—which is why it says to try again later, as shown above on the error prompt.”  It suggests waiting 24-48 hours and trying again; I did this but got the same result.  The Update dialog suggested using the Store also.  This sort of makes sense since the prior Dell was a Windows 10 Home machine upgraded to Win 10 Pro using a product key I purchased at the time, so the store should have known.  Same result and same error.

CMD/PowerShell Commands

I checked a number of articles I found and came across a DOS command that looked like it might work:

slmgr.vbs /ipk (New Product Key).

Nope, that didn’t work either and I had a different error message:

Ok, time to call in the Cavalry; I called Windows Support, they logged into the machine, ran some tests, and came up with the same error.  They told me that error means the product key was “used up” and I needed to exchange it with Best Buy for a new unused key.  They would call me back the next day and try again with this new key I was to get.  That didn’t sit well with me; Best Buy is not the sort of outfit to sell used Product Keys.  As luck would have it, I had an unused, brand-new key from a Microsoft test account, the primary requirement being it could only be used for test purposes, NOT for anything production related. I was not even slightly surprised when I received the same errors, an overused key was NOT the cause

So, a little more searching produced yet another CMD/PowerShell command:

changepk.exe /ProductKey <Your product Key>

I plugged in the Best Buy key and hit Enter…Lo and Behold!!!  The machine tells me it’s updating and that it will reboot one or more times.  It did that, and, when the desktop came back, Settings > System > About now says Windows 11 Pro.  When Microsoft Support called back the next day, they were as surprised as I was.  They were familiar with the command, but it’s apparently rarely necessary

If the upgrade from Windows 11 Home to Pro gives you similar grief, give this command a shot, it might just work for you!