Greetings All –
My laptop came equipped with WIN 11 Home. I’ve had it for over a year. I have used some of the techniques to keep Windows updates at bay, but with Susan’s article regarding the upcoming 23H1 version, I decided it was time to upgrade from Home to Pro.
Based on an earlier article (Lance Whitney I think), I obtained a key from Kinguin for about $30 U.S. I had used them earlier with good success for a key to Office 21. When I went into settings to change the Product Key, upon entering the purchased key, I got a failure message saying, “This didn’t work. Try something else.”
I then went back to Kinguin’s customer support and they established a link with the key’s provider who asked, “Do you have Windows Home?” I answered yes. They said you’ll need a 2nd code. So I was directed back to the Kinguin site, and there was the additional code.
I entered this code into the Windows Settings change key dialogue, and the upgrade process commenced. After a couple of reboots, I was now the possessor of WIN 11 Pro. Looking at the activation status, it showed, not activated. When I clicked on activate, I got a message saying that code couldn’t activate. I can’t remember the exact words.
I clicked on change key and entered the original code that I had purchased, and activation completed successfully.
Apparently for this situation, two keys are necessary: one to initiate the software upgrade, and the other to activate it. At any rate, all is well now. Hopefully, this post might lessen someone else’s burden.
Casey H.
