This post shows students and new users steps to upgrade Windows 11 Home edition to Windows 11 Pro. If your PC comes with Windows 11 Home installed, you can pay for an upgrade from within Windows 11 to upgrade from Home to Pro.
There are two ways to upgrade. You can purchase a retail Windows 11 Pro license key from a vendor or supplier, then add the Windows Pro key to your current PC and upgrade. If you haven’t already purchased a Windows Pro key, you can click the Shop button from within Windows activation settings to purchase a valid Windows Pro key and upgrade with it.
When you decide to upgrade to the Pro edition, you’ll get BitLocker drive encryption, integrated Hyper-V virtualization, a built-in remote desktop server, and other business-targeted features like joining a domain in an active directory environment.
The steps below detail the process you will to take if you’d like to upgrade your device from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro. The following steps apply only to devices currently running an activated copy of Windows 11 Home. If you’re not activated, you should activate Windows 11 Home first.
Once Windows Home is activated, you can then continue below to get the upgrade process started.
How to upgrade Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro
As mentioned above, one can do an in-place upgrade from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro edition easily from the Windows Settings app.
Windows 11 has a centralized location for majority of its settings. From system configurations to creating new users and updating Windows, all can be done from its System Settings pane.
To get to System Settings, you can use the Windows key + i shortcut or click on Start ==> Settings as shown in the image below:
Alternatively, you can use the search box on the taskbar and search for Settings. Then select to open it.
Windows Settings pane should look similar to the image below. In Windows Settings, click System, then select Activation tile on the right pane of your screen shown in the image below.
On the Activation settings pane, select Change product key, and then enter the 25-character Windows 11 Pro product key.
Select Next to start the upgrade to Windows 11 Pro.
If you don’t already have a Windows 11 Pro activation key, then you can select to Store option to purchase a Windows 11 Pro license.
- Select Start > Settings > System > Activation.
- Under Upgrade your edition of Windows, select Open Store
- Make sure you’re signed in with your Microsoft account to purchase Windows 11 Pro
- After you confirm your purchase, you’ll be prompted to install Windows 11 Pro and restart your PC. You’ll then be running Windows 11 Pro.
That should do it!
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to upgrade from Windows Home to Windows Pro. If you find any error above or have something to add, please use the comment form below.
