The Episcopal Academy

Sometimes we'll order PC laptops that come with Windows 11 Home.  To be able to join our domain (or to get around the need to log in with a Microsoft account), we need to "upgrade" them to run Windows 11 Pro or Education/Enterprise.  The steps below detail how to make this change right from the OOBE (Out of Box Experience) when first turning on the laptop.

https://superuser.com/questions/1734956/how-can-i-upgrade-a-brand-new-windows-11-home-to-pro-without-leaving-the-out-o (for completeness, original steps listed below)

1. While in OOBE (i.e. first start up of a new laptop running Windows 11 Home - Out Of Box Experience), hit Shift-F10 to open a command window.

2. Run winver.exe to see current version of Windows

3. Run slmgr.vbs /upk to uninstall the current Windows Home key (maybe optional)

4. Run changepk.exe /ProductKey <Your product Key>
   
   Use this key:
   
   Windows 11 Education - CNVGM-JVRFG-HP7FB-CQ7BH-T3BM3
   
   Using the Education key, Windows will run through a quick upgrade and then restart the OOBE.  Windows Education is basically a variant of Enterprise (https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/vkwsre/what_am_i_losing_using_windows_11_education/).  
   
   If you want to convert to Windows 11 Pro or actual Enterprise, you can repeat step 4 using either of these keys:
   
   Windows 11 Enterprise - XT4NY-QKR6V-8JQHD-2MFKW-JFG44
   Windows 11 Pro - QQGYP-6N8K2-TBYH2-3G4JJ-XW3GY
   
   You can’t go directly from Home to Pro or Enterprise - you have to use the Education version as a go between.
   You don’t have to be connected to WiFi to run this command successfully.

5. After running the command to change the product key, the laptop will reconfigure itself and reboot into the OOBE again.  This time if you click Shift-F10 and run “winver.exe”, it should show that you’re now running Windows 11 Education.

6. Continue through the initial setup of the PC, including adding a local admin account:

   1. When you get to the Sign in screen, click “Sign in options” and then “Domain join”.

   2. Create a user with the name “admin” and password “ns2008ea”

   3. Give these answers for security questions: 

      1. What’s the name of the city where you were born? - newtown square

      2. What’s the name of the city where your parents met? - newtown square

      3. What’s the name of the first school you attended? - episcopal academy

7. To make these product key changes once loaded into Windows (i.e. not in OOBE), you can search for “product key” and choose “Change product key”.  You can also get there by opening Settings then clicking on System - Activation.

Original steps from link:

1. Choose language, keyboard layout, device name etc.

2. Once you hit the login screen, press F10 to open CMD. Technically you can open CMD while it's installing Updates but I don't recommend this because it will restart without warning and might interrupt the following process.

3. Run slui.exe /upk. This is not always necessary but I suspect sometimes the Home license will be installed and needs to be removed first. Doesn't hurt to do anyway.

4. Run changepk.exe /ProductKey <Your product Key> It will say it failed but ignore it.

5. Restart

6. It's now Windows 11 Pro.

I installed Windows 11 Home into a Virtual Machine and tested this using the Generic Keys from this website, this is what I found to get to the steps above:

• Running changepk.exe /ProductKey VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T (Key for Windows 11 Pro) brought up the "Preparing for Upgrade" dialogue but then failed with Error Code 0x80070490

• I also tried slmgr.vbs /ipk VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T. This errored with 0xC004F069 and said to run SLUI to get full details. 

• I ran slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F069 and it said 

• However, I then ran slui.exe /upk to uninstall the Product Key, and then tried changepk.exe again, after rebooting the OOBE was now for Windows 11 Pro and I could create a local user and domain join.  

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