Upgrade Windows 11 Home to Pro via Microsoft Windows 11 Home to Pro Upgrade for Microsoft 365 Business (DG7GMGF0D8H4:0002)

If you have purchased a computer with Windows 11 Home, and you wish to join it to Entra, then you need to upgrade Windows from Home to Pro.

The easy way to do this is to go onto the Microsoft Store and purchase the upgrade – here in Australia, the Home to Pro upgrade is around $169 if purchased online. If you have Microsoft 365 Business Premium licensing however, you can purchase the Home to Pro upgrade for around half this price via your Microsoft partner.

It’s very straightforward to purchase the upgrade, and once the licence has appeared in your Microsoft 365 tenancy, you can go to Billing > Your Products and you’ll see Windows 11 Home to Pro Upgrade for Microsoft 365 Business sitting there. You can click on the product, and then under Downloads and Keys > Keys > Show activation keys and it will give you a 25-character product key.

What you can’t do though is then go into Settings > System > Activation and simply enter this product key to upgrade Windows. Why not? I couldn’t tell you!

As it turns out, there are two ways that you can perform the upgrade and activation. First up, take note of the activation key you were given in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

You’ll also need the generic Windows 11 Pro licence key – this key will upgrade Home to Pro, but does not allow Windows to activate.

Windows 11 Pro Generic Key: VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T

Settings App

Go into the Settings app. Go to System > Activation > Upgrade your edition of Windows > Change product key.

Enter the generic key above. This will kick off the Home to Pro upgrade and then force a reboot. Note that the reboot happens without warning and will not give you a chance to save any open files, so make sure you don’t have any other apps open at the time.

After Windows has rebooted, go back into the Settings app. Go to System > Activation > Upgrade your edition of Windows > Change product key

Now you can finally enter the key you got from the Microsoft 365 portal, and this will activate Windows.

Terminal / PowerShell

You can also do this via the Windows Terminal app in PowerShell. Open Terminal and type in:

changepk.exe /ProductKey VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T

This will kick off the Home to Pro upgrade and then force a reboot. Note that the reboot happens without warning and will not give you a chance to save any open files, so make sure you don’t have any other apps open at the time.

Then, once you’ve rebooted and logged back in, open Terminal as an Administrator and type in:

slmgr.vbs /ipk <your-key-from-the-admin-portal>
slmgr.vbs /ato
slmgr.vbs /dli

After each step, you’ll get a dialog box pop up on screen confirming that the step was successful.