Forum Discussion
Upgrade from Win11 Home to Win11 Pro with a unused Win8 Pro Key?
In case you already upgrade the Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and activated it and revert back to the Windows 8.1 , then you may upgrade to Windows 10 and then if activation worked, then upgrade to the Windows 11.
In theory, in case you upgraded to the Windows 10 and Windows has been activated, you may use the product key in upgrading to the Windows 11, but I haven't tried it , so I couldn't confirm this behavior.
Reza_Ameri :Thanks for your answer.
Actually I never had Win8 installed on that machine - the laptop came with Win 10 Home pre-installed, and I upgraded it to Win 11 Home without issues. My plan was to change the product activation key from Settings and enter the Win 8 Pro key I bought back in 2013.
For what's worth I found a similar question answered in this thread:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/upgrade-windows-10-home-to-pro-using-windows-8-pro/a20b15b5-f6b6-486c-b580-d387428c576c , to the effect that the upgrade from Win 10 Home to Win 10 Pro is possible in Win10 by first supplying the generic Win10 Pro key to switch from Home to Pro, and then a valid Win8 Pro key to activate the Pro license.
Not sure if this is also the case with Win11 though, so the question is: what is Windows rejects the Win 8 Pro key, will I be able to enter the old Home key (or do a System Restore), or will I mess up my system?